Redeem
by antepathy
Summary: Barricade is captured by the Autobots, with no hope of rescue. Meanwhile, Flareup and Ironhide continue to have issues after their captivity, and Optimus tries to smooth things over with the humans. Sequel to "Fallout."
1. Default Settings

_A/N Oh, another installment of the continuing saga. For those joining the party late, hi! This follows "Fallout", which follows "Break" blah blah blah (like those 'begats' in Deuteronomy!) They're decent reads ("Break" is one of my all time favorites of things I've written) but to get you up to speed fast: everyone feels guilty. Barricade tried to warn Flareup that they were all in danger and got taken captive, by a very hostile Ironhide, with whom he has a history. I think you can figure the rest out from there. _

I: _Default Settings_

**Diego Garcia **

**Hangar D2**

Borrowed time. It's all been borrowed time. Every klik, every cycle. Ever since Saejon Three, ever since Starscream, he'd had a chance to make something of his life, to do something. And how many megacycles later and…he'd done nothing except claw his way up to a nominally forgettable administrative position.

He'd always been a loner—just never felt it as much as now. Even when Frenzy died it hadn't felt this bad. He hadn't felt this alone then. They'd still had a mission, and Frenzy could be a hero fallen in combat. Now, what did he have? He was alone. Fallen…not in combat. Not even properly fallen. Frag. He'd fragged everything up. Taken prisoner. Trying to warn Flareup. What had he been thinking? He had his self-concept challenged, dawning realization that he was, objectively, an awful, evil creature. Do anything to fix that, for his own ego. Awakening, slowly, sluggardly, to the fact that he hadn't been 'good' or honorable all along. Never. Amoral at best. So this sudden burst of conscience? Oh, of course. If I save the femme, it's all better and I'm not a vicious thug any more. Really? REALLY? Wrong. Kind of fragging moron believes that shit anyway? Acted on principle, you fraggin' idiot. See where it got you? Now everyone knows everything. No more secrets. Can't hide any more. Everyone sees you for what you are, and even you have to see yourself for what you are. No hiding. That mirror in your recharge station? Yeah. Know your fragging enemy. You, all this time. Look at yourself, no I mean really fragging LOOK at yourself you filthy shit. Everything Ironhide said was true. True. All of it. Saejon Three: my fault. Killed my own mechs. Back then, too, got too caught up in playing the game, and winning. Didn't notice the price being paid. Paid in the lifesparks of other mechs. Price being paid in my own…spark. Got…caught up.

Caught up. Frag. Where the frag am I? Where am I? I remember the plane. I remember Flareup oh primuskeepherawayfromme. I remember Ironhide. All those ugly truths. How I wish I could just hate him for those truths, as though my life were his fault. As though he were to blame. All he did was speak the truth. Begin externalizing the punishment I deserved. Had those mechs I'd killed—had anything I'd done balanced out their lives? Had I done ANYTHING in my entire onlining worth the death of thirty mechs?

Starscream had reported that during his captivity they'd held him isolated. Probably for his protection. Except for the human linguist the jet did NOT want to talk about. And a disarmament team. Well, they'd have the easiest job in the world with Barricade about that part at least: No weapons, once they spiked his wrists. Why keep him alive? Why drag this out? Who did this suit?

When in doubt, he thought, who profits? Ironhide gains nothing. Gains more from Barricade dead: personal satisfaction. Optimus? If he didn't figure Optimus to have such a sterling silver spine of honor and decency, he'd suspect Prime of holding him to use as a bargaining chip. Only a few things wrong with that: nobody gonna give nothin' to get Cade back—Soundwave will take his job in a capacitor tic. Starscream will be more than glad to be rid of the millstone of Barricade's fragged up life that had probably been weighing him down since Saejon Fragging Three. Blackout? Blackout might miss him—Primus knows the copter tried harder than anyone to be friendly with Barricade. If only…if only I didn't always presume they were trying to get something from me. If only I thought that maybe Blackout's overtures of friendship were sincere. If only I'd let myself get fooled that way…even once.

Too fragging late.

*****

This was driving him crazy. He could feel it. His sanity, shredding like bad code. Locked in here with his memories. Nothing but. Not even a zip point to distract him. No hope of even the damn copter showing up to stir him out of his lethargy. Lethargy. His body seemed paralyzed, but his processor was racing, throwing up recriminations so fast they seemed to blur together.

Was he paralyzed? He shifted one foot, feeling the ankle servos fire, hearing the sound of metal on metal. Sign it was real, not just sensorblock. Or worse—joint death.

Someone else heard as well. The darkness became slightly darker over his right shoulder. Barricade blinked, cycling his optics to lowlight. "Awake?" The Autobot medic. The one who had given him the blessed/hated sensor block on the plane.

"Yeah," he croaked, his vocalizer sore. Somewhere, at some point, he'd done a hell of a lot of screaming.

Ratchet waited, as if expecting Barricade to do something. Barricade just closed his eyes. Seeing, not seeing? Difference? "You still with me, Barricade?"

"Yeah." The medic seemed to want more effort. Probably as gratitude for his efforts. Which, considering Barricade couldn't feel a fragging thing, must have been pretty damned impressive. "Still here. Sure you're thrilled."

"I suppose it's a good sign the attitude has come back," the medic said, dryly. "Mind if I perform a systems check?"

"Don't care." He heard Ratchet bustle in his tools. "Don't have to pretend I have any choice in the matter, though."

"Huh?" Ratchet looked over.

"Just…don't play games. Condescending to feed the idea I could stop you from doing anything you wanted."

"Barricade," Ratchet began, paused. Began again. "We're not like that. I am not like that." He turned Barricade's head slightly, for the systems check port in his throat. Barricade's vision slued hard. "Guh!" he gagged.

"Sorry," Ratchet murmured, "Side effect of the sensor block. You may end up purging. But it's better than the alternative."

Barricade would have to take his word for it, as he was struggling to keep his optics online, and his systems from purging. Cleanser foamed in his mouth. He swallowed, hard, but bubbles of it flecked his lips. He was mortified as Ratchet calmly took a rag and wiped it away. Cleanser stung in his cracked labial plate.

"All set. Ready?"

"If I say no?" he managed, more foam escaping. Another swipe with the rag.

"Then I do not do it." Ratchet laid the diagnostic datareader on the berth beside Barricade's head, folding his arms over his chassis. "You need repairs: I cannot access your internal diagnostics without a systems check and your permission. I will not violate your will." Your choice, in other words: damage or violation. Give in to one of them. Frag. He deserved the pain, but he knew no matter what that was the one thing they wouldn't let him have. Let him hover here forever in sensor block before they let that happen.

"Yeah. Fine. Do it." He gritted his eyes closed. One of his eyes tracked the progress of the systems check, scrolling the details as they downloaded to Ratchet's device. He watched it, idly. Something to look at. Something to do—looking—than just lying here with his thoughts. And himself.

"Doing okay?" Ratchet asked, distractedly. 'Good bedside manner' stuff—he didn't care, most likely.

"Fan-fraggin'-tastic."

"The sarcasm is unnecessary."

"The sarcasm is the only thing keeping me together right now." He cut himself short, appalled by the honesty of the sentence. Unintentional. He swallowed around more cleanser foam.

"Your optics are offset," Ratchet mumbled. "Not to default."

"Yeah."

"They need to be at default for me to check optical systems."

A string of curse words marched across Barricade's processor, on their way to his vocalizer. "Fine," he pushed out, before they could make it. He cycled through a ventilation, and released his optics, feeling the larger pair arc outwards, giving him a nearly 270 degree vision field.

Ratchet started. "That is unusual."

"You can say ugly, too."

"It is merely…an unusual design. I have never seen it before."

"Base model used to be kept off the battlefield." He laughed, bitterly. "You can see how fragging great we are in combat."

"Held your own, I hear." If Barricade was supposed to get blushy-giddy at the compliment, Ratchet was going to be sorely disappointed. "Was that true, what Ironhide said?"

"That I was the bastard behind Saejon Three? Yeah." Why mince words?

Ratchet flinched, as if Barricade's vulgarity hurt him. "I meant that you did primary systems hijacks?"

"Yeah." He shifted uncomfortably, around the truth he was twisting out of all recognition. "Had a big processor and a megaton of shell programs to do it, though." Implied: can't do it now. Lie. Oh, Barricade, you are filth. Can't stop lying, even a little bit. Even now. Trying to run some approach. He wondered if this, too, were a sign of improvement. Hey, doc, I'm running headgames on you: am I getting better? "Can I put my eyes back now?" He coughed against the taste of cleanser in his throat.

"Oh, in a klik." Ratchet turned to grab a clean rag. With his optics spread, Barricade saw it. Them. Maybe it was the sensor block. His chassis heaved. He had just enough time to turn his head to the side before he purged, splattering against the berth, the floor, Ratchet's datareader, Ratchet himself. He cringed, humiliated, but all of his eyes spun to fix on the spindly mass on the worktable behind Ratchet.

His arms. Meta's arms. The little spindly wire frame arms they had installed in him to cope with the higher performance demands. The little arms he'd had reworked as his close-in weapon, former fingers sharpened into spinning spikes. There. On the table. How…how could he not have felt their absence? His systems purged again. He began blurting mindless, meaningless apologies, as Ratchet wordlessly moved to clean up the mess.

"Shhhh," Ratchet said, sweeping the mass of fluids into a basin with detached practice. "It happens." Barricade continued his string of apologies, not even sure who or what he was apologizing to, as if words could make anything better. As if they ever had. He shut them off, staring, purge and strings of cleanser foam hanging from his face. "Barricade, it's not a big deal. You think you're the first mech to purge on me?"

"That's the stuff that draws mechs to your specialty in droves, isn't it?" Barricade muttered.

Ratchet gave a wry grin, moving to wipe Barricade's mouth. Only then did he notice the fixity, and then the focus, of Barricade's gaze. He shrugged, as if a little embarrassed. "We had to disarm you, you realize. You did the same to Ironhide and Flareup."

"Yeah." The word choice was just a little too apt. Disarm. He felt an almost hysterical laughter well up in him. He let Ratchet push him back onto the flat hardness of the repair frame. "Never very useful to me, anyway," he said, bitterly.

"Well, against us, maybe not. But," Ratchet sighed. "Rumor has it the Americans might take you."

"Ameri—why?"

Ratchet shrugged. "No idea. Optimus is doing his best to talk them out of it. For your sake. You know, after Megatron."

Yeah, right. Optimus cared so fragging much what happened to Megatron at the humans' hands that he would do ANYTHING to prevent another filthy Decepticon from falling into their reverse-engineering vivisectionist clutches. Even the All Hallowed Optimus wasn't that altruistic. He smiled weakly, saying only, "That's very good of him." Primus, these bots really all believed that tripe. Probably believed Optimus voided pure energon and could power a transwarp drive with the love in his spark. "You know he's not going to win that one, though."

Ratchet frowned. Questioning the Mighty Leader? "He'll do his best, Barricade."

Oh of COURSE. "You know the possibility exists, otherwise you wouldn't have already," he choked on the word, "disarmed me."

Ratchet picked up the systems check analyzer, wiping one last bit of purge off it with a rag. "That is true," he admitted. "They have already been to look at you." He looked unhappy.

Well, that wasn't creepy at all. "Frag it," Barricade said, closing his eyes. "At least someone wants me."


	2. Reprimand

2. _Reprimand_  
**Diego Garcia**

It had come to this, Optimus thought, sadly. Ironhide stood defiant in front of him, refusing to move from parade rest, despite Optimus's entreaties that he relax, stand down, just talk. Just…talk. But Ironhide held himself with a stony stillness, his eyes hard. As if he had already decided that words would not help him. Or that, more likely knowing Ironhide, he did not need help.

"I understand your feelings, Ironhide," Optimus began, gently. He shifted on the low platform he'd settled himself on. The last thing he wanted was to have Ironhide feel too strongly the difference in their heights. "I certainly understand why you," he tripped over this word, "hate Barricade." Autobots did not hate, a voice in the back of his mind insisted. Believed. He believed. If we become like that, if we succumb to hate, we do not deserve to win this war. "For what he did to you."

"To Flareup," Ironhide corrected, sharply.

"To you as well."

"He did nothing to me." And that was, apparently, as Optimus could see it, the problem. Ironhide would hate Barricade less if the Decepticon had tortured Ironhide himself, beaten him, abused him, maimed him. That, Ironhide would have withstood. That was fighting on a battlefield Ironhide understood. What Barricade had done—not even Optimus was sure he'd kenned the depth of.

"You mentioned Saejon Three."

"Ratchet shot that one down, remember? I was a filthy fraggin' 'con back then myself." Ironhide tightened his shoulder gyros in their mounts.

"It still counts, Ironhide," Optimus said. He watched his weapons-specialist's eyes glister momentarily, and felt that hollow awe in his capacitor that he had the power to do that. Simply by authenticating, giving permission, he granted Ironhide's feelings legitimacy. It was a terrifying amount of power. One he dreaded overusing. He hoped he'd always feel this uncomfortable about it—aware of the dangerous edge he was on. "Our concern is that," he stopped himself. "Forget that, Ironhide._ My _concern is that your very valid hatred of him will cause you to overstep lines that should never be crossed."

"It didn't stop him." Ironhide met Optimus's eyes with his own in open challenge.

"We cannot fight like that, Ironhide," Optimus said gently. "There are rules."

"Rules! Why have rules when we're the only ones playing by them?" Ironhide's mouth twisted. "Rules like that hamper us."

Optimus shook his head, sadness settling over him. "Those rules define us, Ironhide. Keep us safe."

"They endanger us."

Optimus tilted his head, looking over Ironhide's shoulder, struggling for the right words. "They may endanger us physically. But the rules protect something more important, Ironhide. Our integrity."

"Otherwise, what? We're no better than they are?"

"Yes." Relief. Ironhide got it.

"Maybe I'm not."

The relief sputtered like a flame in a vacuum. "You are, Ironhide. I remember. You are not one of them." He watched, once again, his words take effect. So much power. And he didn't have half as much rhetorical skill as Megatron had had. Back then. This, however, must be done, too. This must be said. "But, you must understand that, for as long as he is with us, you will not be allowed in Hangar Delta."

He saw Ironhide's eyes blaze almost white with fury. "You don't trust me."

Oh, I do trust you, Ironhide, Optimus thought. But part of that trust is knowing what a short fuse you have. And how easily Barricade could ignite it. "If he controlled you before, could he do it again?"

Ironhide froze, his spark going acid-cold at the thought. "No," he finally said. "He would have done it on the plane. At least stopped me." Right? No sane mech would let Ironhide beat on him like that.

Optimus frowned. Barricade had been almost inviting Ironhide to attack him. He'd seen this sort of self-punishment before, with Sideswipe, after Sunstreaker…was injured. "Nonetheless, I would not like to take any chance he could do…that to you again."

"I'd never let the bastard try." The words sounded thin.

"Consider it your punishment," he said, sternly. "It is the smallest I could think of, and for your own protection. Just in case. Stay away from Barricade: no good could come of it. For either of you."

He watched Ironhide struggle with a handful of emotions. "Fine," he finally managed, as though the word were bitter and he was trying to spit it out. "I will not go near him."

"I have your word. Of honor?" Clumsy, Optimus scolded himself, but Ironhide needed to be reminded of honor. Of his own. His honor, as much as his former status as a Decepticon, set him apart. One elevated the other, redeemed it.

"Yes. Word of honor. I will not go to the hangar. Or near Barricade."

No disguising the relaxing of Optimus's shoulders. "This is not easy for you, I know. I knew I could count on you, Ironhide, to do the right thing. I always can."

"Really." Flat hostility. Optimus sighed. After all this time. Ironhide was questioning himself. It only made sense he would question Optimus as well.

Revisiting this. "You were wrong to assault Barricade after Tunguska. We cannot fight like that."

"So...I did the wrong thing but now you trust me to do the right thing?"

"We all get...caught up in our emotions from time to time." This, Optimus knew. A constant fight. A constant struggle to put leadership, the best for his team, his beliefs, the Autobot future, above himself.

Ironhid shifted, half uncomfortable, half angry. "Heard enough of that from Flareup."

"Yes, I know. You could have hurt her, too, you know.

"Yeah." Ironhide dropped his eyes. He didn't like being reminded of it. It sucked the wind out of him. "Right. Lost my…temper there. Flareup was right. And Sideswipe." Dammit, let it go. Got two audio-caches' worth from the two of them.

Optimus nodded. "They were worried about you." Worried. About Ironhide. The very idea grated on the weapons mech.

"Dismissed?" Ironhide prompted, stiffly.

Optimus frowned at Ironhide's sudden stiffness. The perfect soldier. He had always been the perfect soldier. And Optimus wanted something else from him. Something, perhaps, not in his power to give. "Yes," he said.

"Thank you, sir," Ironhide said, turning hard on his heel. He strode off to the Alpha hangar, his body rigid with repressed anger he dare not show. Less at the order, Optimus knew, than the fact that others had dared feel anything for him. That others cared hurt him worse than the reprimand. Ironhide had always held himself back, apart, acutely haunted by he legacy as a 'former enemy'. Optimus wondered sadly how lonely he had been, and how lonely the Decepticons were, each of them wrapped in such stiff isolation.


	3. Private Vow

_A/N: Yeah, the AU stuff comes in again here. Sorry. Refs to "Control." I was in denial…forever about going AU, and not being fully canon compliant but…ya know what? Bayverse isn't even consistent with their own canon so…nyah. _

3. _Private Vow_

Nemesis

Starscream cursed himself as he keyed up the overrides and forced the lock to Barricade's recharge. He gave a quick glance to either side—no one around. No one looking. No witness to his sentimental stupidity.

The room already smelled stale, disused, and the light seemed high-keyed and harsh. Other than that, though, the room was exactly Barricade. Piles of datatracks and at least three different datapads cluttered the floor, creating a series of complicated paths from the recharge berth itself to the solo daily maintenance facility. Starscream squatted down, flipping through the tracks. Everything from history to art and philosophy. Barricade had never had a proper education—this was a testament to his piecemeal attempts to grab some. Always overreaching. Always trying just a little too hard. Starscream traced one datatrack's cover sadly with a talon. 'The History of Cybertron under the Protectorate', the bright cover said. 'With interactive maps!' Another, underneath as he lifted the first up, promised historiography of the early Cybertronian civil wars. That one featured biographical backgrounds of key players. Over by his foot, another pile…music theory.

Oh, Barricade. So bright, so quick…. So fragile. So aware of his fragility that he spent his off-duty hours trying to fill every weakness. The thought of Barricade poring over this silly datatrack, scrolling through the maps, all four of his eyes intent, searching for something, as if some piece of information would make a difference, make him safe, make him strong: Starscream's spark ached.

The datatrack snapped in Starscream's hand. He turned to look at something else, anything else, and saw—the helmet. He staggered back at the sight of it, hissing involuntarily. It hung ominously over the berth, where it would stare down at Barricade every recharge cycle. Meta's helmet. The last time he had seen it, the faceplate had been shattered on the floor of the combat control room, cables cleanly sliced by his own hands. This had been repaired, the faceplate replaced, a smooth, hard, glossy, impenetrable mask. One could see anything in that faceplate: judgment, impassivity, contempt. Anything dark on its sleek black surface.

Every recharge, Barricade lay under it. The thought…disturbed Starscream. No wonder he read so obsessively. No wonder he pored through history—he couldn't make sense of, much less let go of, his own past. Starscream wanted to hurl the helmet on the floor, smash it. Destroy it. As if that would do anything. Mere symbolism. It would not help Barricade, not right now.

The berth itself was…poorly maintained. Small patches of corrosion and spots of dried on leaked fluids spotted its surface. Announcing in simple enough language that the mech who recharged here ignored his daily maintenance. For long periods of time.

That he could do, at least. He could clean the berth. Another symbol, yes, a useless one, but a symbol of hope. Of concern. The jet picked his way across the floor, carefully, to the maintenance facilities, wetting a handful of cleansing rags. The thought crossed his mind that Barricade would just as likely interpret it as 'getting rid of evidence of his existence.' Fine. Starscream would have that fight with him. Gladly.

He scrubbed at the berth, the cleanser stinging into his hands' cables. I am sorry, he said. Did I make the right decision, listening to Skywarp? Was I right—that he was more detached? The wiser head? Did they save you or did they leave you in that horrid forest to face the wrath of the nuclear blast?

His ventilation hitched. A warrior does not leave his companions on the field of battle. But…Skywarp had said, and it rang like truth, that the Autobots would take him with them.

Not that that presented an appealing option. He swiped another cleansing rag across the pitted surface. Barricade a prisoner—right after what he had done to Flareup. To Ironhide. For all of their pacifist philosophies, there were plenty, Starscream knew, who wouldn't mind a little old-fashioned retribution. Who would not respect his prisoner's status. And why would they, after…Flareup?

A flash of anger on Starscream's face. That had been wrong. To ask that of him. But not deserving of this. To do it at all—well, war had its necessities. But he had seen Barricade's wild eyes as he'd stormed from the interrogation room down to the hangar door. That had…been too much. Even for Barricade. Something had…awakened in him. Something stirred. Too much.

Starscream glanced up at the helmet again, trying to blame it for Barricade's breakdown. It stared at him, mocking him with its stillness.

The Autobots had not actively mistreated Starscream during his capture—they had passively so, yes. And perhaps that was an insignificant distinction. But he had his reputation to protect him, and the Autobots had to keep up appearances around the NEST soldiers. Neither condition applied to Barricade. They could do anything to him—anything—and no one would be the wiser.

Barricade? Will I even know if they offline you?

He set his mouth, pushing himself off the floor with one last swab at the berth. It gleamed dully now, scratched but clean. He gathered up the dirty rags to drop them in the autoclave, crossing over the same narrow pathways in the floor, almost tripping over a datatrack of _Seeker Cadets_. Old, the cover faded. His ventilation hitched again. He had given that track to Barricade. Megacycles ago. Back when he'd felt the bond between them like an obligation. Like something that required some material connection—something Barricade could hold onto and say, see? This is mine. It was given to me by someone. Back before the requirements of the war had stopped Starscream from caring about anything. Before too many abstract responsibilities took away from him his real, his living ones.

He stepped carefully around the track, his hands still full of rags. Anxious not to break that one. Symbolism, again. Sympathetic magic: the stuff of primitives.

He dropped the rags in the autoclave—it smelled musty from lack of use, and rattled wearily as he turned it on. He was resolving to give Barricade a lecture on proper self-maintenance that would short out his audio for a decacycle, when his eye caught something. The reflection of his hip in a piece of shiny reflective metal held to the plain grey of the bulkhead. He squatted down. Yes. His hip. Would be Barricade's head.

A shiny square of metal, perfectly reflective, like a solar panel or some other mirrored reflector. Starscream saw his face thrown back at him, the bright light sparkling off small scratches in his dermal plating. Over the surface, etched into the wall—it must have taken cycles, going over it again and again with a small tool—'know your enemy.'

Oh.

"Barricade," he said, softly, his eyes hard on his own face in the small mirror, where Barricade would see his own face, under those words, every solar. "I will get you back. I will not leave you."

He straightened, turning to give the cluttered room one last look. No. There was nothing for him here. His eyes fell on the dinged up _Seeker Cadets_ track. A sign, he said. An omen. "I will get you back from them." From yourself. I have rescued you before. I will do it again. I will.


	4. If Words Can Comfort

_A/N Two chapters today, because I'm not 100% happy with chapter four here. You'll notice one of the themes of the title starting to come up in these two chapters as well--the notion of a price being paid. Yay pretentiousness. :/_

4. _If Words Can Comfort_

**Diego Garcia**

Sideswipe figured anyone walking by would think he was insane. He didn't care. He talked to the CR pod anyway, the same way he's spent—oh how many cycles?—talking to Sunstreaker in his stasis. Maybe it was ridiculous. Maybe Cliffjumper couldn't hear him. Maybe Sunstreaker couldn't hear him. BUT, maybe they could. And if they could, on that off chance, they were going to damn sure know that Sideswipe didn't leave a buddy. He was right there beside them as they fought. A battle he couldn't help them fight, a battle against death, but he was there nonetheless, cheering them on. They'd know. If there was any justice in the universe, Sideswipe thought, they'd know. Someone missed them. Someone didn't forget.

"Been real quiet, CJ," he said. "Course we only got back a few solars ago. But the 'cons have been super quiet. Which is makin' me crazy, if you want to know. You know how I get when I'm cooped up for too long, right?" He paused, almost like he was expecting to hear Cliffjumper's answering laugh. "Gonna take a swing at Ironhide just to liven things up soon." He grinned.

"Still have the 'con. I know he's not the one who did this to you, but…close enough really, right? I mean, like there's any difference? All the same. All the enemy. Don't know what Optimus is going to do with him. I'm hoping he lets Prowl take a crack at him. Well, really I'd love to see Ironhide get a chance, but you know I hate an unfair fight. So…Prowl. I figure he's the best one to mess with Barricade's mind, you know? Love to see that. Bet you would too."

He shifted on the floor. The CR pod's stabilization routines cycled on again with a soft hum.

"Ratch says once you're stabilized he can start repairs for real. Already got most of your new face ready. Still ain't as pretty as me, though, but I guess by now you're used to that." Another grin. "So, your fraggin' job, because Sides doesn't like slackers, is to get yourself fraggin' stabilized. This ain't naptime, you know? War on, CJ. So get off your butt and get in gear so we can go back out there." He punched the pod playfully. "War may not need you, and Primus knows I don't need you, but…. I want my buddy back." His smile eroded. Lost two buddies now. Both his fault.

"Come on," he said, a hint of anger in his voice. "Fight for it, CJ."

"He is fighting,"

Sideswipe jumped off the floor, whirling. Since when anyone snuck up on him? He was losing his cool. Losing his touch. "Oh, hi, Flareup." He resheathed his blades. "What are you doing here?"

She gave her own embarrassed grin. "Just…Ratchet's letting me help out here, a bit, in Repair Bay. I need something to do." She jutted her chin at him, defiantly. "Therapy, you know. For what happened to me."

Sideswipe cocked his head. "You want to get in to see him, don't you?"

She blanched. "No!" she said, too hurriedly. "But I want to make sure that, you know, he's safe."

Sideswipe leaned against CJ's pod, as if protecting it with his frame. He thought back to what he'd said to the pod—how much had Flareup overheard? "Look, Flareup, I'm not a smart guy. I know that, all right? So I don't know what all went on up there. If you say he was nice to you, then what can I say against that? I wasn't there. But I was there at Tunguska. I saw him attack you."

"He'd dropped his weapon. If he wanted to hurt me, he could have shot me. He jumped at me to warn me."

"Hell of a warning, Flareup."

"Hell of a warning that we're about to get nuked? Damn straight, Sideswipe." Her red optic seemed to glow brighter.

"Yeah, okay," Sideswipe said, backing down, looking over his shoulder at Cliffjumper's pod. Didn't seem right to fight amongst themselves when CJ was there fighting for his spark. Tactical retreat, and regroup, he thought. "You're right about Ironhide, though. That's who you were thinking about, right? About him not being 'safe'?"

She dropped her eyes. "Yes. I know it's awful, but I think sometimes he loses control of himself. I worry about him. One day, you know, he might lose it so much…we never get him back."

Sideswipe shot another look at the pod. "Yeah," he swallowed, hard, around a lump of tension. "Or we could lose someone else."

Flareup rolled closer, "Sideswipe, Cliffjumper's injuries aren't your fault."

"Came to try to rescue me." Didn't need rescue. I was doing okay. I didn't need—I didn't need this to happen.

"You'd have done the same." She smiled, faintly.

"Yeah, but…."

"Would you endure what he's going through if it meant he was safe? Would you pay the same price?"

"Primus, Flareup, of course I would. You know that."

Her optics winked at him—the effect was still unsettling. "I know that, Sideswipe. Just wanted to remind you of it, too."


	5. There Are Rules to this Game

5. _There Are Rules to this Game_.

**Nemesis **

**Repair Bay Beta**

Blackout allowed the repair bots to crowd him through Ambulatory and into the cradle room. They swarmed around his feet, some of the bolder ones climbing on top of their brothers to latch onto Blackout as he walked. He winced as a few probed some of the nastier hits he'd taken from the Autobots. The rounds from the humans peppered his armor, creating a low-level buzz of discomfort across his sensornet. And he'd fired his main gun into overheat. The barrel would need replacing, and probably part of its cooling system as well.

But what hurt most of all was Barricade. Blackout knew why Barricade had torn off after the cyclebot. That just made it worse, actually, knowing that Barricade had fallen trying to make something right. Part of him liked it better when he'd thought, like everyone else, that Barricade was just a weakling with a scary attitude. But part of him burned with worry. Which was why he was here, forcing repairs.

Soundwave had let him down. Promised him pre-load and load images of the Autobot transport planes. What he had delivered…nothing. Starscream had been right: had warned him that Soundwave would not deliver. Why would he? It was in the satellite's best ambitions that Barricade be dead and forgotten as soon as possible. Blackout stirred a dull anger, less at Soundwave's deceit than that he'd put so much hope into it. Should have done this immediately. Shouldn't have waited. Shouldn't have trusted. Ever.

"Priority: flight capability, high radiation, high flux," he muttered at the bots. Aesthetics be damned. He was going back to Tunguska as soon as he was flight cleared. He was going to find Barricade's remains. Bring them back. Someone would mourn Barricade. Someone would keep a memorial piece of armor on him. Someone would keep part of Barricade with him, a physical talisman, a reminder of the price paid so far. Of how much had been lost. No one else would do it for Barricade; Blackout would. He deserved that much.

He slumped back in the cradle, releasing his armor locks so that the repair bots could get to work. Their little touches were always somehow soothing. He thought back to the last time he'd been here. Of Ironhide, whom he'd last seen savaging Barricade from behind. He calls himself a warrior, Blackout thought, angrily. Not a warrior. Fighting hard was one thing, even fighting dirty was okay—Blackout had hit more than his share of targets from behind—but hitting an opponent when he was already down, already neutralized? Waste of resources, for one thing—that's how Starscream would put it. Brutality is how Blackout would put it. He knew he was considered a target-locker—he'd fix on one target and stay on it til it was down, but even he didn't hang on to inflict pain for pain's sake. Take out of the fight, sure. Take out of the fight, permanently, yeah. It was a rough game. But delivering pain for the sake of it—as Ironhide had done—no.

Yeah, sure, maybe it was hypocrisy. He'd fought, uncomplaining, alongside mechs with very different battlefield morals than his, and he'd never protested their overuse of force. Never considered his own. Maybe it only mattered because it was against one of the few mechs Blackout half-respected. Maybe it was wrong that that changed things. But it was still parsecs better, he consoled himself, than the Autobots' brand of hypocrisy—claim to hate violence, while apparently doing it pretty damn well. Their mass philosophy didn't match their individual actions. We hate violence, and we hate hating. But we do them so very well.

Decepticons didn't hate either one. AND did them very well.

Ironic that the Autobots' best warrior was the one furthest from their ideal. If they had half the morality they claimed, they wouldn't use the very things they abjured as the means to make their perfect society. At root, Blackout thought, that was what was wrong with the Autobots. Not the desire for peace (even he grew weary of fighting), but the idea that peace could be achieved through war.

Blackout thought back to sitting across the repair bay from the captured Autobot. Of his fight then with pain, how he had struggled with the physical pain of his damaged rotor.

Yeah, finally found the answer how to deal with so much physical pain. Answer: find something bigger, worse, more painful: a psychic weight crushing at his processor.

"Hey," a voice cut across his contemplation. "Heard you did a lift under fire of drones."

Blackout's optics snapped open. Dead End, his head looking freakish and naked, the skull plating bare silver and round where it had been replaced after Starscream had stopped him from assaulting the cyclebot. Great. Just who he wanted to be stuck with. He hoped the repair bots would get him flight capable in record time. He grunted.

"Yeah, well, thanks anyway." Dead End sank back in the repair cradle. "Probably only did it under orders."

Saved them rather than my friend, Blackout thought, hotly. "Why you care so much about drones, anyway/"

"They're helpless. Someone needs to look out for them." Dead End frowned.

"Someone…like you?" Unlikely champion, to say the least.

"I don't see anyone else doing it. Besides, it's not their fight. Don't even know what they're fighting for. Suffering for. But they know how to suffer—that's about it. They've done nothing to deserve it." Some dark implication Blackout chose not to deal with right now. Have any of us done anything but suffer? Had any of us done anything to deserve it? Just because Blackout could think, did that make him any less a drone in the great machinery of war?

"Yeah, that's about them. But that doesn't answer why you care." Blackout felt a pulse in his capacitor—that was a very Barricade thing to say.

"I care because I know what it's like to be the guy everyone forgets about. Til they need me. Like your friend Barricade." Dead End rubbed at his bare skull plating accusingly.

"You didn't stop," Blackout said, cutting Dead End short before he went off on yet another of his self-pity self-righteous trips. Brutality. He couldn't condone Dead End's either. Not if he was going to hold Barricade against Ironhide. And he fully intended to."Your fault."

"How's that work, huh? I stop when? Why? How? Like a circuit breaker? On/off?"

"Not supposed to enjoy it, for one thing." Blackout frowned at the smaller mech.

"Like you don't?"

Blackout's fists bunched involuntarily, causing a repair bot to squeak a protest as his joints pinched one of its dainty limbs. "Look. Let me put it this way. Everyone here works out their own code, all right? What works for them." Barricade had definitely, Blackout thought, been working out his. Ugly and uncomfortable work. What you will and will not do—what you need to be able to look at yourself with optics wide and focused and not turn away at what you have become. "First rule, though, while you figure yours out: Listen to those who have been there before you. Follow fraggin' orders."

"Like you always do?" Dead End pushed a repair bot out of his way, sitting up agitatedly.

Yes, dammit. Blackout thought back to Starscream ordering him to evac Tunguska without Barricade. "Yes," he said, his voice dangerous. "Even when it bothers you. Especially when it bothers you."

Something in his face made it through to the stupid runticon. Dead End sank back, his face thoughtful. "I think…I think I get so twisted about the drones because I don't have any other friends, you know? How do you do it? How do you keep your friends?"

Blackout gritted his optics shut. Wrong question. He tried to summon up hatred: hard words to slam the stupid runt back in his place, shut his mouth. "You don't," he said, hearing the agony in his voice. In this business, you don't keep your friends: you keep little pieces of them. His capacitor hitched.

"Barricade?"

Shut up, Blackout's cortex yelled. Don't need or want your sympathy. "Yeah. Gotta get back down there. Find…something. Part of him."

"Don't think anyone would do that for me," Dead End said, nakedly envious.

"What do you care? He set you up."

"Yeah? Number what on the list of mechs who have done that? And maybe he set me up, but I followed through all by myself." Dead End's mouth twisted.

"You know what, runt? I liked you better when I didn't like you."

It struck him as a very Blackout thing to say.


	6. Telemetry of Mistrust

6. _Telemetry of Mistrust_

**Diego Garcia**  
**Hangar Alpha One**

"I'm just not sure we've thought through all the variables," Prowl said, patiently. "One of them being, what use they could possibly put him to." The morning sun streamed through the high clerestory of the hangar, limning Prowl's armor to the color of tarnished silver.

Optimus frowned. He trusted Prowl's logic, and his certain sort of logic-driven instinct implicitly. But logic didn't always work. Especially, as Prime was discovering, when humans were involved. They were young, he told himself. But sometimes it was hard to understand their motivations, much less their priorities. And to be honest, he was still reeling from the Russians. The Russians, who had seemed so, well, he couldn't call them _friendly_, exactly, but…willing to work together, who had suddenly then dropped a warhead on the battlefield. On their own kind. "Yes," he said, carefully. "I am afraid of their reverse-engineering. And Barricade, because of his position in the Decepticon hierarchy, doubtless has some advanced technology." One reason they had tried so hard to isolate Starscream during his captivity: the jet's weapons would have kept the human engineers busy for years inventing new and horrifying variations and fugues of warfare.

"Not weapons, though," Prowl corrected. "But you're right. Even if all he's got is signals, they can…revolutionize their current technology. Then again, they had Megatron for how many years? They weren't able to understand enough to do much."

"True, but they're catching up. Alarmingly." He looked at the broken down racks that had once held NEST's computer assets on a gantry, now propped against the wall. Computers that were unheard of, unthought of, until Megatron's body had been found and studied.

"Again, a valid concern. Any others?"

"Mistreatment. Either from ignorance or by design, they could easily cause Barricade to suffer." Optimus knew that Ratchet felt he'd failed to provide enough care to Starscream. One reason Ratchet had been bouncing back and forth between Cliffjumper's pod and the back corner of the hangar where they'd isolated the Decepticon.

"According to Ironhide, that would be just deserts," Prowl said, mildly. Optimus knew he didn't believe that himself. Prowl was the one who had reminded him earlier, by the same sort of blunt unpleasant questioning, of his priorities.

"We will not hand over even an enemy to the likelihood of mistreatment."

Prowl nodded. "The humans call it 'rendition.' Turning an enemy over to someone whose morals are…less squeamish. The donor gets to keep their clean conscience while still garnering the benefits of torture."

"Benefits of torture," Optimus echoed. "That is why we cannot do that. We cannot allow that to happen."

"The other options are," Prowl said, flatly, "We keep him—either to interrogate or terminate or both—or we return him, somehow."

"We never did interrogate Starscream," Optimus said. "I do not know if I have the stomach for it."

"I do," Prowl said. "But I think that termination should be off the table. At this point. As long as we call ourselves Autobots."

That soothed Optimus. He knew Prowl was harder in spark than himself, seeing reality through the harsh light of logic. But it reassured Optimus to know that Prowl still recognized the Autobot priorities. If only Ironhide…."Returning him?"

"Perhaps later. If we find a useful way to leverage him."

Optimus frowned. "Remember we said that about Tracer. They executed him after we returned him."

"I do not think it likely they will do that with him."

'Too valuable?"

"Perhaps. However, the humans insist that they have law on their side and Barricade is theirs, don't they?"

"Yes. I didn't completely follow their logic, but that's the basis of it."

"Could be garbage," Prowl said, bluntly.

Optimus frowned, moving to look at the hangar door. The skeleton crew of Air Force personnel were out for their morning run, their cadence filling the morning air like militarized birdsong. "I know that, Prowl. But the issue is, if we expect to have a working relationship with the humans, we might have to let them win this one."

"Do we want one? With the Americans?"

"They have certainly been more trustworthy than the Russians," Optimus said, a little surprised to hear a dull chord of anger in his voice. "But again, he cannot be mistreated."

"So, you're thinking safeguards."

"Yes. The humans have a 'Red Cross'—they go into detention facilities and make sure the prisoners are not being mistreated."

"You want more humans to verify that humans are not mistreating Barricade?" Teetering at the brink of calling Optimus ridiculous.

"No. It would have to be one of us."

"Who?"

"Someone he can't twist."

"That leaves out Flareup. And Ironhide, obviously. Arcee?"

"Not after Flareup."

"That leaves the two of us, really."

"Yes." Maybe one of us: Optimus wasn't sure of himself. Right now, after the Russians, he felt his own beliefs raw and vulnerable, an open wound to be salted.

"There is one other thing." Prowl's normally impassive face creased with a kind of worry. "While we think about that. To get to his location, we will need the assistance of the humans. We have no air transport of our own."

"They will not refuse us." Optimus spoke with a confidence he did not entirely feel. "They will understand our concerns."

Prowl nodded, as if Optimus's word was good enough as law for him. Optimus knew that Prowl never questioned him with sedition in mind; only to have his objections dealt with. Prowl had supreme faith in Optimus's ability to do that. Optimus wished he had the same confidence.

"There is, however, one last thing I have thought of." As if this had been what he'd really wanted to ask. Prowl was skilled in his own way, but verbal deception, even to hiding his real concern, was beyond him. It was, Optimus thought, an asset. He did not lie. He could not. "Diego Garcia is an island. In effect the humans have us already in a prison. They seem to be in no real hurry to get us to move, to insist we begin preparations to move." Prowl's optics hooded under his chevron-crest. Optimus knew Prowl hadn't been pleased with the lack of preparations on their own side. "My concern is…without their assistance for transport, and without their assistance in getting raw materials to generate energon…."

Optimus frowned. It was rare that Prowl was unable—or unwilling—to finish a thought. He didn't need to in this case though: without human assistance, the Autobots on Diego Garcia could be left to starve to death. Slow, miserable end. And then the humans could come and pillage them for secret technologies, with no one to be the wiser. No, he tried to tell himself, they wouldn't do that. Humans are not capable of such savagery.

Are they? The fact that that voice had any volume in his processor sent a shiver of cold worry through him.


	7. Unavoidable Reunion

7. _Unavoidable Reunion. _

Nemesis

It should not have been a surprise, Starscream realized, that Skywarp was waiting for him outside his recharge station. He acknowledged his Trine mate with a brisk nod, brushing past him to code his door. Skywarp's hand took his arm.

"Starscream," the black jet said, quietly. "It has been…megacycles." Implying: is this how you greet me? Is this all the Trine means to you? Starscream felt his mouth pinch. Reminded of failure, right away.

"I have…kept in touch," he replied, stiffly. His eyes would not leave the black-armored hand on his arm.

"You have sent messages on significant dates. You have never live-commed. You have never replied to any sent to you." More blame, recrimination. Not even credit for the incredibly tedious calculations across different time spreads and local calendars to figure out the correct dates and transmission lag. Of course not. Bad leader, according to Megatron. Bad Trine mate, according to Skywarp. Bad…everything else as well. Starscream blinked, slowly. Trying not to see himself. The image flashed in his mind again of Barricade's little mirror. Know your enemy. Oh. Yes.

"Yes, well," he hedged, "I have been busy."

"Too busy for your Trine?"

Starscream squirmed, trying to twist his wrist out of Skywarp's grasp. "No," he said, softly. "I just had nothing worthwhile to say."

Skywarp's optics studied him for a long moment. He released the bronze jet's wrist as the door coded open. Starscream stepped through, but did not code the door closed. Halfway between an invitation and a rejection. Skywarp stood in the doorway, his broader wingspread brushing the sides of the door's frame.

Starscream crossed to his daily maintenance facility, squatting to pull a bore brush from a bin.

"Nothing worthwhile," Skywarp echoed. "You're the fragging Second in Command."

"Do not be vulgar," Starscream said, wetting the brush with cleanser from one of the taps. Skywarp waited for him to say something else. Starscream cycled the barrels of one chain gun around, ramrodding each with the brush.

Skywarp rested against one side of the doorframe. "Fine. You're angry at me. Tell me why and I'll apologize."

Starscream paused, put the brush down, turned to the door. Picked the brush back up, concentrating on his actions as though cleaning the barrels was an all-encompassing task. "I am not angry at you." He spoke as if the words themselves cut into him.

"You've always been a terrible liar, Starscream. You're angry about my call to leave Tunguska. You feel that I usurped your authority."

No! No. That was not it at all. "I was…I was not thinking clearly. Again." He winced as he shoved the bore brush in one barrel, hard enough to hurt.

Skywarp winced as well. "You thought clearly enough to command this unit in Megatron's absence."

"And such a brilliant job I did of that," Starscream said, bitterly. "Mutinies by my own fr—mechs," he corrected. He threw the bore brush into the sink, where it rattled, the sound cutting through the tense silence.

Skywarp stepped into the room. "Starscream," he began, gently.

"Why are you here?" Starscream turned, leaning against the sink. "Why are you even here?"

"I—I wanted to talk to you."

Starscream's optics narrowed. "You came all this way, because you missed talking to me." The sarcasm was palpable.

"Starscream," Skywarp gestured with his hands, soothingly. It irritated Starscream. Would they ever stop treating him like this?

"Oh, do NOT try that with me, Skywarp. I know more than you think. I know, for example, that Megatron sent for you." He gritted his jaw in satisfaction at the stricken look of surprise on Skywarp's face.

"Who told you that?" Halfway between a tentative denial and alarm.

"Someone who would not lie about something like this." Barricade had a love/hate relationship with the truth, but Starscream had known him long enough to know there were some things Barricade would not lie about. Not to Starscream.

"The one we lost at Tunguska?" Skywarp tilted his head, still trying to wrap his processor around the situation. He barely knew anyone's name, and he was searching for answers he didn't even know the questions to.

"We did not lose him!" Starscream shrieked.

"Starscream," Skywarp began again. The bronze jet swore that if he heard his name pronounced once more in that unutterably condescending way by his Trine mate, he would tear out the other's vocalizer. "It is not your fault. You can't control everything in a battle. It happens."

Starscream reached for something, anything. His talons closed around the bore brush. He threw it, hard, at Skywarp, snarling as it bounced harmlessly off the black downswept wing. Skywarp looked at the brush as it clattered to the floor. He looked up, a little sadly. "Is this what you want, Starscream? Really?"

"You do not know what you are talking about!" Starscream yelled, ignoring Skywarp's appeal. "This is not about what happens in battle. Do you think I have not seen enough battles to know that by now? You insult me! Always!" He gripped his hands together, the metal barbs squealing against each other.

Skywarp's look of surprise cycled through 'hurt' and then to something Starscream could not name. He cycled a deep ventilation. "All right. I don't know what I'm talking about. Because you don't let me in. Tell me." He crossed over, uninvited, to perch on Starscream's recharge berth. Starscream had half a mind to throw him out, bodily, if necessary. But still…Skywarp. His Trine mate. Starscream had no idea why he was here, and half of his suspicions were unpleasant, but…his Trine mate. After so long. Did he really—could he really throw away the last even semi-functional relationship he had? He had lost Barricade. Blackout along with him. And now?

"I cannot explain the reasons," he said, slowly, keeping his eyes on the floor. "Because I do not know them myself in a way that I can put into words. But I must get Barricade back." He forced himself to look at Skywarp.

Skywarp paused, as if digesting this, and then, hesitating, picking his words, so careful not to make the bronze jet feel his authority was challenged again, "Can I help?"


	8. Fateful Meeting

8. _Fateful Meeting_

**Diego Garcia**

**Hangar Delta 2**

Ratchet bustled over the repair frame. He was really beginning to irritate Barricade. Which, admittedly, didn't take much. So Barricade was doing his best to return the favor. "Stop it," Barricade squirmed, trying to turn his face out from under Ratchet's attempt to scrape the dried energon and coolant from the armor plating. He'd been here for…solars apparently, and no one had risked taking him to a proper washrack. "Think I'm handsome enough for this already."

"Stop…moving," Ratchet muttered, pinning the 'con's head to the back of the repair frame with one hand, while he daubed a dilute solvent on the dried-on gunk.

"Ow!"

Ratchet sat back. "Oh, come on, Barricade. After what you've been through, you don't think I'm going to buy that the sting of a little solvent is torture to you?"

The 'con shrugged one-shouldered. "Worth a shot."

"You have a very odd sense of humor."

"Could say the same about your bedside manner."

Ratchet sighed. "Look, Barricade. I know you're nervous. It's okay. You don't have to put on this abrasive act. I'd be terrified if the humans were taking me, too."

"See? That's what I mean about your soothing bedside manner. And I'm not scared." I'm dead already. Just a matter of time until reality catches up. And it's not an act.

"Sure. Anyway, just so you know," Ratchet lowered his voice, as if he wasn't supposed to tell Barricade this, "I have installed the motion-blocks in your legs. The same as you had put in Ironhide."

Barricade grunted. "A little guarantee of good behavior, served with a delicious sauce of irony, huh?" He met Ratchet's eyes, level. "Only issue I have with that is getting that fraggin' psychopath's used parts."

Ratchet shook his head. He was used to hearing too much from his patients—they normally opened up to him, telling him things they'd never told anyone. Perhaps the repair process bored them, or, unlikely, Ratchet's persona seemed to emanate trustworthiness. But Barricade hadn't opened at all; remained like a tightly coiled prickly animal. It reminded Ratchet of something he had scene on a human television show. A porcupine, he thought it was called. Or prickly-pig. Something like that. But it suited Barricade.

A tap at the door—they hadn't ever installed proper Autobot door chimes, and now there was no point, so they all stuck with the human custom of knocking. Impossible to do, Ratchet had noted many times with increasing irritation, when one's hands were full. "Yes."

The door rolled open—despite himself, Barricade turned to look. A blue cycle bot holding a small human-sized chair, and next to her, apparently, the human for the chair. Male, middle-aged, hair a faded blond. Uniform: military. Barricade spent the first few seconds translating the uniform: Master Sergeant. Sternburgh. Air Assault. HALO. Jumpmaster. Hello, human. Barricade determined to be unimpressed.

He turned his gaze insolently to the cyclebot. "You must be Chromia." He switched to English, so the human could play along. He enjoyed the flicker of emotions across her face, from surprise to how she figured out he knew her name. "Good to see they brought someone so brave to guard the human against vicious big bad me." He flexed his sensor blocked talons, watching them respond slowly, inefficiently. "Heard you went at it with Starscream."

"Shut up, 'con," she barked.

"Chromia," Ratchet soothed, gesturing her back against the wall.

"What?" Barricade blinked in feigned innocence. "I just wanted to know how her repairs were progressing. I hear she lost an arm." He winced, showily. "Painful."

"Con, shut UP!" Chromia said. Ratchet shook his head, warningly. As if Barricade actually had to listen to him. Right.

"How's Flareup, by the way?" He felt a little dirty asking this one. Part of him actually wanted the answer. Chromia rolled forward, arming her missile launcher, her face a hard mask of fury.

Between them, the human, who had settled himself in the folding chair, started laughing uproariously. A little too much, but then again, Barricade was throwing acting subtlety out the window himself. "Jesus H Tap Dancing Christ!" he laughed, "You are gooooood!"

"Supposed to care what you think, human?" Barricade snapped. Still, it was a little gratifying to have his work appreciated. Maybe.

"Only if you want to live."

Barricade rolled his optics. "Really. Well then, take me to the fraggin' casting couch."

The human sat forward, eyes glowing. "You," he said, "are going to be so much fun."

"To break? Try me." Already broken.


	9. Battlefield Walk

9. _Battlefield Walk_

_(A/N: Going back to what I know here: in the Middle Ages, it was common after a battle for both sides to visit the battlefield, under a sort of 'truce' where each could search for friends, comrades, family members. The Middle Ages were a warrior culture, as both Cybertronian factions seem to have evolved into, so I thought it might not be a stretch that they would have evolved a similar ritual.)_

Tunguska

It had been a dumb idea, Blackout thought, to do a straight atmospheric drop. Right into the chaotic up drafts and magnetic upheavals left over from the cycles-past nuclear blast. It had fallen off target, he noticed, when he could finally get his navigation grids to give him a read through the interference. Skywarp and Starscream had headed off to intercept, and maybe this was the result. They'd certainly bought time. Blackout struggled to find some gratitude, but just like it was hard to see with the radiation buzzing his optics, it was hard to feel any gratitude to Starscream. Who had left Barricade to die. Ordered Blackout to leave.

He supposed if Dead End were with him, the stupid red runt would feed him some line about at least he'd saved the drones. Yeah. He had. It was something. But it didn't add up to Barricade. Sure, in every tactical assessment, they had specific algorithms to calculate how many drones were worth the life of one sentient mech. Blackout hadn't pulled the variables for this mission, and didn't care.

It doesn't make any difference, really. And in a way, he was inured to this…process. He'd walked hundreds of battlefields, in the tense awkward posture of a mourner looking for a fallen comrade, carefully avoiding the eyes of the enemy engaged in the same thing. For fear of…apology. Connection: I share your loss.

We share nothing, he thought, angrily. Before the war, those who would become Autobots had willingly thrown their military into harm's way, again and again, without any real sense of what it cost. Oh, they complained about the cost. ALWAYS the cost. Energon: costs too much. Find a way to make do with less. CR? The rehabilitation would take too long. Not cost-effective. We can train another drone to be a warrior, two drones, for less than it costs to rehabilitate a fallen soldier. He hoped they choked on the costs now.

As if the only cost were financial. Even now, Sideways was held tenuously to life in a CR pod, not discarded, not thrown away. For whatever bad (and there was plenty) that might be said about Megatron, he knew, he respected that much: Sideways would not die for lack of regen. And now, that they had the energon, his repairs could commence in earnest.

Calm down, he told himself, fighting emotion and tension. It had taken solars to clear a mission window to do this—they'd all been put to work helping to process the rough chunks of ore into useable energon. It had been exhausting, but no one complained. They all knew what they were doing was saving lives. And, he told himself, Barricade is not any more dead for your delay. He will be here. You will find him. And mourn him. At least you will find him. Unlike…Scorponok. Gone, disappeared. Dead? Held captive and tortured by the humans the way that they had tortured Megatron? Blackout swallowed bitter disappointment at himself. He would do better by Barricade.

Even here, as he landed, transforming to land solidly on his splayed feet, even far from ground zero of the blast, the land still bore the effects of the blast—everything shatter-sensitive. Grass burst into powder as he brushed it with a toe plate; a tree snapped sharply, brittle, as he pushed by it; even the mud had been dried to a compacted powder. He turned, slowly, trying to get his bearings. His nav system was too affected by the radiation to pinpoint the former LZ, and trees had been strewn like dropped rods, their branches and leaves entirely blasted away.

There. That looked like the LZ. It looked different, more exposed, now that the trees surrounding it had been destroyed, but a thin layer of whitish ash caught like snow in the dried mud where there had once been an upchurning scuffle. Everything smelled like bitter ozone.

Blackout climbed the small rise, brittle-baked trees splintering under his feet into puffs of powdery dried mud. Here. Here he was. Over there…that was where Barricade had shot round after round of suppressive sniping at Sideswipe, splatting the Autobot into the then-gooey muck. And? Where was the stand of trees where Barricade had thrown himself to warn the cyclebot? Blackout rotated, his memory cortex replaying the battle, Barricade's route, in front of him…here. Or maybe here. Blackout couldn't pinpoint his own location, so the best he could manage was a loose vector to his right.

Still, it was a start.

A cycle later, all he had for his effort was a dull ache in his exposed joints, where the radioactive ash had worked into the mechanisms, as he'd dug through piles of downed trees. Finding…nothing. Empty shell casings. One or two hastily-disposed-of missiles. A few of the humans' weapons—tiny fragile things that snapped like spun sugar as he touched them, their barrels warped and melted, as mute testimony to what he'd find if he found Barricade's body.

IF. It had become an if. It sickened him.

It struck him—what if the Autobots had taken him? They obviously got out of here—he was pretty sure in his digging he'd've found even the hint of a slagged Autobot. Had they? A brief flare of hope. Sputtered. What they would do with Barricade if they had him…didn't bear thinking about. Blackout remembered watching Ironhide casually abuse Barricade, twisting the small sensitive fairings behind his neck with obvious pleasure. Yes. War was an ugly business. And Barricade was going to discover it the hard way. In a way, no fault on Ironhide—a 'con would have done the same, most likely. He'd done the same, if he were to be brutally honest. Didn't mean he wanted anyone he considered a friend to be on the receiving end of it. Didn't want to imagine. Didn't want to think of it. Problem was: he could imagine it all too well. As well as imagine the enjoyment the inflicter would get. He knew that, too.

Or…the humans could have taken him. Where were the humans? He realized suddenly what had disturbed him this whole time, nagging at his cortex about this battlefield. There was no trace of the fallen. Discarded weapons, empty shell casings, yes. But no bodies. Not even human. It was like a giant hand had come and erased all sentient presence; blasted nature the only thing left. No bodies. It gnawed at Blackout. He pushed it aside—that wouldn't get him any closer to finding Barricade.

His shoulder gyros slumped in defeat. First Scorponok, and now Barricade. He had let them both down.


	10. Darts from Memory

10. _Darts from Memory_

Diego Garcia Bravo Hangar

No one dared approach Ironhide as he sat with his energon ration. Something about the way he sat, or maybe it was the way he stared at the plastic container of his ration, as if willing it to explode—whatever it was, no one wanted to get closer. Even Ratchet thought twice about it, but one merely sidelong look at the untreated injuries on Ironhide's shoulder panels—beginning to corrode orange-red and black—and his duty overrode his compunctions. Ironhide could be, would be, testy. So what? It would be the pain talking.

"I have some free time this afternoon," Ratchet said, dropping into a squat next to Ironhide, carefully balancing his own energon ration. He knew better than to sit in front of Ironhide—the mech tended to view anything across him as confrontational.

"Goody for you." Ironhide took a sip of his ration, making a disgusted face. "Can't believe we still have to use this crap."

He was right: the humans' early forays into refining the energon were fine, chemically, but they definitely left something to be desired in taste. "It's still energon," Ratchet said, not having to hide his own reluctance for his own ration.

"We used to have refuel intakes," Ironhide said, distantly. "Autoinjectors. Our energon was shit, too, back then. But at least we didn't have to taste it."

Ratchet shifted his weight. Ironhide didn't often talk about his time with the Decepticons. In fact, Ratchet had never heard him speak about it before. Was it a good sign he was finally opening up? Or was it a sign that more bad memories were roiling to the surface?

"You're right," he said, forcing himself to take a sip. "But maybe we've gotten spoiled."

Ironhide glared at him, sideways, under half-lowered lids. "Autobots have always been spoiled." Ratchet did not want to follow where this thought lead, so he veered back to his original subject. "I was saying: I have the afternoon open—I can take a look at you."

"Pfuh." Ironhide spat. Possibly at the energon again. "Can't go to Delta at all. Prime's orders."

"What? Oh." Ratchet bought time with another drink. "They're moving Barricade later, so it'll be fine."

"Fine." A derisive snort. "You know what's not fraggin' fine? The fact that every fraggin' one of you knows why I'm not allowed there. That none of you trust me."

"It's nothing to be embarrassed about," Ratchet said, blandly, groping. "You have good reason to hate him. We all respect that." The words sounded thin and insincere in the air between them. Ratchet understood hate, but he also understood hate never brought out the best.

"You don't even know."

"Because you never tell us."

"Told you enough."

"You said he'd taken over your primary controls."

"Made me kill my own mechs."

"Deliberately?"

"Does that change anything for you?" Ironhide challenged.

Ratchet sighed. "Not really, no. I'm just trying to understand."

"There's nothing to understand. I trusted him. He made me kill my own mechs."

"I can't know what that feels like," Ratchet said. Ironhide stared at him for a long moment, then grunted. It was, after all, only honesty. Ratchet could have no idea. "I imagine," the yellow mech said, carefully, "That I'd have problems trusting anyone myself after something like that."

Another grunt of acknowledgement. Ironhide stared out the open hangar door, swallowing the rest of his ration in one gulp. "I can still see 'em, you know. Sometimes. Some of them didn't see it coming. Some did, and hesitated—firing at another 'con is against every discipline we were ever taught. They wavered, I didn't. Meta didn't."

"They died?"

"He didn't go for maiming shots." Ironhide tapped his chest, above the spark chamber. "Right here, every time. He could boost any integrated weapon to lethal force, too." He started rotating the empty plastic container—the humans called it a 'bucket'—idly, watching a last slosh of the vile energon slurry.

Ratchet winced. That was brutal. Decepticon efficiency. He remembered—or rather he remembered triages he had NOT gotten, the battered frames shunted off to one side, beyond repair. Yes. He remembered Barricade as a combat controller. He simply hadn't connected Barricade and Saejon Three.

"If we fought by those rules," Ironhide said, quietly, "We'd have won by now."

A lecture bubbled to Ratchet's vocalizer. He swallowed it. Ironhide didn't need a lecture right now. Ironhide tilted his head. "Gonna go tell Prime about that little comment, aren't you?"

Ratchet twitched. He had been thinking of it. "No," he said, "Of course not." Unless, he promised himself, Ironhide's talk got more disturbing. More openly…traitorous? Dangerous. "And you're probably right. We might have won." That was as far as his conscience would let him agree. Would they have deserved to win, by those means? Ratchet didn't think so.

Ironhide shrugged. "Whatever. Tell him or not. Time was he used to listen to me, too."

"He listens to you."

Ironhide silenced him with a look. "He doesn't even trust me not to go and murder Barricade in his recharge. Though the fragger would deserve it. I do know whose side I'm supposed to be on," he added, pointedly.

"What did it feel like?" Ratchet tried to redirect the conversation again. If he could keep Ironhide in the past, he might get the key, the cure, for the mech's rage, his distrust.

"Huh? Oh. It felt—" Ironhide faltered. "Horrifying that it felt so good. You could still feel your servos firing, you could still see and hear and smell and sense everything. Only a hundred times better. And you could do things—he had a whole deck of processors for speed—you couldn't imagine doing. Autotarget with three different weapons, coordinate with others, just…just perfectly. They'd be where you needed them when you needed them, firing exactly the kind of fire you wanted. It was unity. It was trust, because he'd gotten you out of it before. Always."

Ironhide's hands inadvertently squeezed the bucket too hard—it cracked with a soft snap, like wet bone. Thick drops of the energon slurry spatted on the ground. "And that's what he took from me."


	11. Handover

11_. Handover_

Diego Garcia Runway

"You know," Sternburgh said, "Kind of surprised you're being so cooperative."

"Choice?" Barricade walked evenly alongside the Master Sergeant. "You get what you want, my only choice is easy or hard way."

He was right: not really a choice at all. He could resist and get bound and possibly injured, or he could not resist and keep some semblance of control. Of dignity. Sternburgh noted: this one likes being in control. Chooses that over a display of force, an assertion of physical power. Even when the choices were small. He might not always make the choice to avoid pain, but he wanted that choice. Sternburgh shot an irritated glance back at their two Autobot escorts, only too eagerly watching for Barricade to try something.

"You could make a break for it?" Testing Barricade's control by feeding him an option.

"One: it's an ISLAND. Futile heroics aren't really my thing." Except that one time, he thought, and look where it got me. "Two: you want me offlined, human, you're going to have to do it yourself." That was the Decepticon's only acknowledgement of Prowl and Sideswipe ranged behind him.

"You're no good to me dead." Assert control over the EPW. Sternburgh was gratified to see a flicker of irritation on the robot's face.

"Is that supposed to be comforting? You're about as good at this as their medic." Behind him, one of his guards growled. "Am I supposed to care that you think less of me for not being your style of idiot-hero?"

"I don't think less of you."

"I don't care." There was no point in any of this, Barricade knew. Escape? Not just tragically futile heroics of the kind he abhorred, but even if he succeeded, then what? Nowhere to go. And a lifetime of trying to strike up conversation with local automobiles seemed like a formula for madness. Maybe that would, at some point in the far, far future, seem appealing. The madness, not the talking to Hyundais. The only way he could keep himself functional was to be as annoying as possible. It also prevented him from questioning why he would want to keep functional in the first place.

Perhaps heroics had a place. When he couldn't take it any more and wanted to die.

They approached the helicopter—a Sikorsky. Barricade felt a stall in his systems in recognition. Kind of ironic. The kind he didn't like. Adding to the deja-vu-style irony was the team of humans fumbling with the carry harness. The same one they'd dropped Ironhide with. Barricade twitched in disgust. Enough of that fraggin' idiot's used parts.

"I can ride inside," he said. "Done it before. You know," he smiled insincerely, "since they're having so much trouble with the harness."

"They can figure it out," Sternburgh said, serenely. "I have faith in them. And I can wait."

Try and block me, will you? "T-truth is," he added a little tremble to his voice. "Afraid of heights." Behind him, he heard Sideswipe bark with a bitter laugh. Sternburgh either revealed his lack of compassion here, or not.

Sternburgh craned his head back. "Bullshit," he said. "What's the real reason?"

Barricade narrowed his eyes. Truth, lie or half-truth? Half-truth. "More fun irritating you."

Sternburgh grinned. "Now, that I believe. All right. Inside it is."

Barricade smirked over his shoulder at Sideswipe as Sternburgh loped forward, directing soldiers to shift equipment around.

"Hope you rust," Sideswipe muttered, "Where they're taking you." He drawled the last bit, almost begging for Barricade to ask. Barricade sighed. Such amateurs.

"Least I hope it'll be quiet," Barricade countered. "You know, without someone carrying on a conversation, and losing, to a CR pod."

Sideswipe snarled, unsheathing his blades. Prowl held him back with a hand on his arm.

"Oh yeah," Barricade said, turning halfway, making sure Sideswipe could see his stasis-cuffed hands. "Or that one time you were crying? Probably the only way you can get a friend is to knock them into regen."

Prowl planted himself squarely in front of Sideswipe, his free hand on the split in the mech's chassis armor, making sure his face took up Sideswipe's entire field of vision. "Enough," Prowl said, over his shoulder. He turned to Sideswipe. "Let it go. He doesn't know what he's saying."

Well, that was true, but Barricade filed that comment away as the right thing to say. He was readying a retort when Sternburgh waved him over. It would seem mean-spirited to pound on the silver idiot right now. Instead, he flashed a smile, the sunlight dazzling off his chromed finials. "Sorry, Autobot. You see, though, my fandom needs me. You know: places to go, minds to warp, that sort of thing." He trotted to the helicopter, turning to give on last wave with his bound hands.

*****

"So, it is Barricade, yes? Pronouncing it right?" This one liked control? Let's give him some.

"Does it matter?" They couldn't pronounce his name in Cybertronian if they had two sets of vocal cords.

"Well, kind of," Sternburgh said, seating himself on a jumpseat between Barricade's outstretched legs. "I'd hate to be insulting you every time I spoke to you."

"Sure." Right. Like Barricade believed that. Around them, the too-familiar sounds of a copter ready to take air, overlaid with the annoying chittering of the human crew. And their smell. Walking bioweapons, the lot of them. Not, Barricade thought, that he smelled like a hot sexy mech himself. Medical maintenance didn't count as full—he'd give almost anything to get to a proper washrack. No. Shut that thought right down, he told himself. Second you find yourself wanting something, they find a way to leverage you for it. You don't want to be clean. Dirty's just fine. Love being dirty. Wish I were more dirty. Downright filthy. He wondered if he could break a human simply by smelling awful enough.

Sternburgh buckled a harness across his chest at a signal from a crewman. "Assume you don't have any sort of safety harness?"

"Been through worse than this copter can take," Barricade said, mildly. "Be fine." He shifted, trying to find a comfortable place to rest his bound hands. Sternburgh noticed the movement.

"We can get those off you once we've got you there safely." Another dangle, slightly more skillful than Sideswipe's: ask where we're going. Ask what's going to happen to you.

Don't. Care. He told himself that, again, firmly: Don't care. He stared stonily down at Sternburgh. The human was still unflustered.

"Oh, you can call me Roe, by the way."

"Hurray."

Sternburgh smiled indulgently, as if Barricade were a cranky sparkling. "Short for Roland. Mom was a French lit major. I hear it was between Roland and Galahad."

"Am I supposed to care? Just want to know, you know, so I can fake the right emotion."

Sternburgh's face hurt from grinning, but it wasn't insincere. He found battling with this one exactly his kind of challenge. "Awwww," he said. "So sweet that you care."

"Just trying to be a good captive. In your movies, the captive gets points for pluckiness."

"Yeah, it is always the plucky ones that survive. So, what are you, the Decepticon Steve McQueen?"

"Before you know it I'll be motorcycling my way across Switzerland," Barricade retorted, "on my way to—" he faltered. Funny joke. Not so funny when you have nowhere to go. What made it worse was that he saw that little twitch on Sternburgh's face that signaled he was filing that bit of information away for future exploitation. He'd have to be careful around this human.

Sternburgh tried to cover the crack—a gesture of pity that grated at Barricade. "I'm surprised you know so much about human culture."

"What kind of idiot doesn't study the culture of their adversary?" Something he said made a spasm across Sternburgh's normally composed face. Interesting. He continued, covering the human's crack a little more skillfully. "Know their culture and you know their values. Just find a way to set two of their values against each other, and…watch them destroy themselves."

Sternburgh's eyes were round and wide as a drone's. Hard to tell if he was faking or not.

"Gonna show you something, Barricade," he said, slowly. Barricade was going to offer some smart retort, but decided he wanted to see this one play out. The human bent down, and tugged his uniform trouser out of his left boot, shoving down his black wool sock as he rolled up the trouser leg. "Fake leg," He knocked the pinkish material with one hand. It rang hollowly.

Barricade tapped his head. "Fake personality. I win."

"Yeah? Let's swap stories. Lost the real thing in '93. Operation Just Cause. Or as we ended up calling it, 'Just 'Cuz'. Stepped on a landmine."

Barricade leaned back against the rear of the cargo compartment, his wing fairings spreading against the metal. "Let's see. Never had the real thing to lose, so…guess you win. Have to say I'm not impressed with your replacement parts. Unless, of course, you have a bomb in there. Or a jet booster."

Sternburgh studied his artificial leg. "Nah. Just…leg. One step above pirate peg-leg. They have much better ones now. You can even run with them." He frowned.

"Stupid human—why don't you get an upgrade?" Unless, like him, Sternburgh was on an upgrade denial list.

Sternburgh shrugged. Another crack—if he was on, he would have been watching Barricade's face. Instead, he studied the cargo netting on the far wall. "I guess after a while, you get used to the damage." He looked up, quickly, perfunctorily.

"Yeah," Barricade said. He slumped back against the wall.


	12. Dispatches from Fort Livingroom

12. _Dispatches from Fort Livingroom_

_A/N Lennox is facing what a lot of long-deploying SF and Delta guys face when they're back home for a long time: families that have grown accustomed to getting along without them suddenly have them…cluttering up the landscape. _

_Optimus makes a weird distinction—it's not diplomacy if he's telling the truth. Or…selected truths and hiding other truths. Is he right?_

Optimus tried to mask the pleasure in his voice, but it was good to hear from Major Lennox. He had to admit, he felt more than a little let down by the Americans' decision, but he knew that Lennox had nothing to do with that decision. Lennox, like a good soldier, simply had to obey orders he did not like. But that did not mean, apparently, that he was not still their friend. On their side. Optimus hated that he'd started thinking about 'sides'.

"It's not just me," Lennox was saying. "A bunch of us feel that way. You know, those of us who have actually had to face the 'cons in combat. We're on your side." Yes, Optimus thought, he thinks it too.

"But your Colonel Axelrod said that if we left, they would leave, too."

Lennox muttered something Optimus didn't quite catch. Then added, "It's a hypothesis. A stupid one."

"Leaving will present considerable challenges for us. Not least of which will be leaving friends like you, Major Lennox."

Over the phone line, Optimus could almost feel Lennox's emotion. "Yeah, us too. Look, we did get upset, you know. About what Ironhide said."

Optimus tried not to sigh. "I know."

"It was a pride thing, really. You know, because he said we got in the way and stuff. But," a pause, "we're professionals. Sure, we got a little bruise there, but we know the mission is more important. We're doing our best to talk the Beltway bozos into seeing some common sense."

"That's very kind of you." Optimus always felt that no matter how much he meant things like this, they always came out sounding flat and insincere.

"So, first, if you could apologize for us to Ironhide—no hard feelings, really. Not sure we're the people that count, but, Ironhide's one of us. In a way." Optimus understood.

"Ironhide considers you one of 'us' as well. We all do."

A gratified noise. "And then, just thought you wanted to know we were working on fixing the little ego tantrum the President pulled on you guys. The 'cons are still out there."

"And we do need you, Major," Optimus said. "We do not currently have the resources to fight them. We had to use your Air Force assets to get to and from Tunguska."

"Yeah, we heard about that. Heard you even got a prisoner." Naked envy in his voice. Optimus wondered if Lennox was thinking that they'd gotten a prisoner because they hadn't been dealing with in-the-way humans. If only he knew.

"Your government has taken him."

"Have they?" A flare of irritation. Major Lennox's sources had failed him apparently.

"Only one of your solars ago. They are keeping him in one of your aircraft carriers. Apparently there is some significance about keeping him in 'international waters'?"

"Yeah," Lennox's voice sounded distracted. He was writing something down. "We'll check up on that. I've got some good friends who are legal beagles. So, how are you guys holding up?"

"Cliffjumper was seriously injured, but he should be released from CR within a solar. All of the other injuries are repaired."

"That wasn't exactly what I meant."

Optimus knew. But he couldn't admit, even to himself, how let down he was feeling by the humans. First the Americans, then the Russians. They both fought with Decepticon tactics. Decepticon ego. "We are fine. The hardest part is that many of us, myself included, have come to love this planet." That was absolute truth. "And how are you? Are you enjoying your family?"

Lennox's grin shone through his voice. "Sitting outside of Annabelle's preschool right now, getting ready to hear every little detail about the story the teacher read them and how gross boys are for chasing her across the playground with crickets."

"She is developing well, then?"

"Yeah." Pride. "She looks like her mom, so she's going to have to get used to boys chasing her."

"And your wife?"

"She's great, too." A little of the smile left his voice. "I think she's a little tired of me getting underfoot. You know, so used to me being deployed." He tried to make it a joke, but it failed. Optimus did not know quite how to respond—to the attempt at humor or the real sentiment.

"War," he managed, finally, "is difficult on relationships." Again, nothing but truth. Optimus was sick of diplomatic shuffling.

"Yeah," Lennox said, "but this time it's the lack of war that's the problem." A bitter laugh. "Probably why the men and I are fighting so hard to go back to fighting."

"We would very much like to work with you again." Maybe, one day, Optimus thought, NOT fighting. But until then, Optimus had to admit that the NEST team members, all of them, were good humans. Straightforward, Honorable. Open. The same values as the Autobots. The difference was, their political leaders thought like Decepticons.

He hoped that Major Lennox's actions would go well. Or else, on this planet, the Autobots would rebel

against the Decepticons—a reverse image of how all this pain and torment began on Cybertron.

He doubted the results would be much better.


	13. This is Where I Will Die

13.

_This is Where I Will Die._

**USS Dreadnaught**_  
_

They'd landed on one of the big flat-topped ships called 'aircraft carriers'. A huge crowd of humans gathered around the flightline. The fact that they seemed color-coded—clumps of them in matching colored jerseys—struck Barricade as funny. Always, these humans, trying to make teams. Identify themselves with a group. Yeah, Autobots did that, and look how far it got them. Decepticons valued individuality. The bad side of that, though, was you were only as good as your last performance.

So: time to perform. These, he told himself, are your fans. And indeed they didn't look anywhere near as hateful or hostile as he'd imagined. Sternburgh—well, he didn't trust Sternburgh's motives at all. Behind Sternburgh's eyes, he'd seen the same iron core he saw in his own side's warriors. When pushed to it, Sternburgh could kill, without hesitation, without remorse. And he could smile while he was doing it.

Barricade respected that. He was the same way. But that didn't mean he let his guard down. Though he didn't really know why he was keeping it up, other than pure reflex. Did it really matter? Did he really intend to make some valiant stand?

Starscream had told him once—some ridiculous warrior Seeker pseudo-philosophical slag—that one couldn't choose the time or manner of one's death, merely how one chose to meet it. The idea being Barricade was supposed to rush towards it with open arms. Turn his death into some art piece, some monument to valor and how he lived his life. All Barricade was hoping for was not to die on his knees and sobbing.

But these humans seemed more curious than anything else. Maybe they'd never worked with the Autobots before and he was the first real up-close Cybertronian they'd seen.

He pulled himself awkwardly—his hands still bound—from the copter's belly and let them get an eyeful. Did him no good to try to come off as 'big vicious Decepticon.' Besides, it might come in handy later if he had them convinced of his harmlessness. So he stood and let them look. He stared at the deck. They expected him to look around, show curiosity at his new surroundings, his new home. This wasn't his home: this was where he would die. He was in no hurry to get acquainted with it.

Sternburgh took control like an impresario, directing a path through the crowd to a side of the deck that turned out to be an elevator, gesturing at Barricade to follow and not even looking back to see if he did. Well, he could probably hear the footsteps: Barricade's alloy footplates against the steel of the deck were audible even over the muttering of the crowd and the distant, yet present, ocean sound and the throb of huge engines. Watching him, knowing now, Barricade could see the slight hitch in Sternburgh's gait as he walked.

"Home sweet home," Sternburgh quipped as the elevator took them to a level under the deck. Dozens of aircraft filled the space, wings folded back, or up, rotors pinned back, to make each take the smallest amount of space possible. Barricade winced—it seemed wrong. Overcrowded.

No. Not mechs. Planes. Dumb, nonsentient aircraft. Primus, Barricade, next you're going to be feeling sorry for the toaster. Projection. Feeling sorry for yourself but don't want to own it so…hello poor victimized aircraft. Right.

"Cozy," he said, dryly. Don't die on your knees, Barricade. Don't go out crying.

Sternburgh began walking backward, like a tour guide. "Steel and powerlines around this make it a natural block to your communications. We've added, of course, more official jammers, so I'm afraid you're stuck with us. Down here," he led Barricade to the front of the ship, "Anchor room." The room had huge chains, each link the size of one of Barricade's feet, spooled around heavy engines. He could smell the tang of the salt-corroded metal. It smelled like his mood.

"You'll be staying in the back. We have an engineering team—a small one—that used to work in Diego Garcia, who will see to your physical maintenance. Tell them what you need, if they don't already figure it out. They say they know what they're doing, but…." He shrugged, eloquently, trying to position himself on Barricade's side. Barricade didn't buy it.

"You're being awfully quiet," Sternburgh said. His tone was light but he was watching the mech carefully.

"Overwhelmed," Barricade said, blandly. He ducked into the room Sternburgh showed him. About half the size of his recharge on the Nemesis. Not that that was any sort of hallmark of luxury accommodation. But it was so…empty. No datatracks. No datapads. Nothing. Just bleak, barely-white painted steel, marked here and there by bleak, barely-white overpainted rivets. He felt, ridiculously, the first twinge of worry. He would go mad in here with just these four walls to stare at. They wouldn't have to torture him. He'd break just from being locked in with his own thoughts. His own past.

"This okay?" Sternburgh asked, leaning against the doorframe. He looked…tired. Keeping up the persona must be as exhausting for humans as it was for him. Or maybe it was the fluorescent light bleaching his skin.

"When do I get my bedtime story?"

A tired smile. "Have to ask the engineers. You'll be okay here, right?" Something like actual concern: the change in pitch was audible. Barricade wondered if Sternburgh knew he was bleeding emotion that badly. He hoped he was managing better. He forced his tone.

"Yeah. Be fine. Always am." Even when I'm so obviously not. Is it a lie if everyone else believes it but you?

"Guards out here all the time," Sternburgh said. "With the motion block for your legs, just in case you try a different kind of funny stuff." A flash of a smile that didn't dare approach his eyes. "Ask them if you need anything."

Right. Let on that he needed anything. Try this one, since it had already been promised. He lifted his bound hands. "Any chance of this? Hard to pick my nose like this." Actually, in a room this small he'd be in agony if he had to recharge in his robot mode. But he couldn't transform like this. And he wasn't going to say that. Show them no weakness.

"You don't have a nose." Sternburgh grinned. Again, almost sincere. "But yeah. I'll get the engineers now. You settle in." A flicker on his face. "You know, as much as you can."

"Yeah, I'll just be here admiring the view." Barricade shook his head. When Sternburgh got tired, he bled like crazy. This was useful. No. This might have been useful. If he'd had anything to exploit it for.

He looked around the rectangular room of oystery-white and was struck with a sudden regret that he hadn't looked around while on the deck of the carrier. His last days, and he would have no recollection of the smell of open air, or the sun, or water, or space. It was the last one that bothered him the most. Even on a confined starship, you could see the stars. Could see the universe unfolding itself, effortlessly vast, in front of you. Always, a sense of space.

He had these four walls that he could touch simultaneously. As the last things he'd ever see.

He hoped no cameras in the room caught his despair.

.


	14. Old Issues, Flare

14. _Old Issues Flare_

Diego Garcia

"Come on," Chromia said to Flareup. "Don't you want to be there when Cliffjumper wakes up?"

No, she didn't. Not because she didn't care, though, which was what Chromia, of course, was presuming. If it were she, she'd want privacy. Time to adjust. Trusted to make her own decisions about whom she wanted to see or talk to. Whom she was willing to look weak in front of.

"I've already seen him," she said, but knew she was going to lose this battle. Fine. She'd join the mass of those intruding upon Cliffjumper as he pulled out of stasis, seeing his injuries and repairs before he did. Violating his privacy. She was tired of fighting. She already began rolling toward Delta Hangar, the perpetually warm sunlight soothing on her armor.

"That's right!" Chromia's face lit up. "How is that working for you? Do you think you want to transfer? Ratchet has nothing but praise for the work you did on the battlefield. I hear under fire as well." Chromia was babbling. Well, it was the first time Flareup had agreed to anything she'd said, so maybe she was trying to be nice. And there was precious little of trying to be nice in the world: Flareup wasn't going to insult her effort.

"I'm still thinking about it," she said, honestly. There was some appeal: to help the injured. To help ANY injured. As soon as she was sure she wasn't making the change out of cowardice, she'd do it. As soon as she was sure she wasn't running away.

"Whoa! Hey, sorry there!" Chromia blurted at the figure that seemed to burst out between Bravo and Charlie hangars. Always like her, to apologize first. Like they'd done something wrong.

"Could look where you're going," Ironhide muttered. He refused to meet Flareup's mixed-colored optics. That irritated her more than his implied accusation.

"And so could you! Do you think because you're larger than we are that you can just go wherever?" Flareup rocked back and forth on her tire in agitation. Ironhide. Again.

"Flareup," Chromia said, shaking her head. "It's no big deal."

"No, it IS a big deal. Just because he's big he just has right of way, right? And on top of that, he can get away with having no manners at all?" Flareup was only half-irritated at Ironhide. Chromia knew better. They had talked about this over and over again. And Chromia was normally the FIRST to point out that the big warriors had the worst attitude and the worst sense of entitlement, and here she was, feeding into it with her automatic and slavish apology?

"Flare," Chromia said, "This is so petty. Let's remember Cliffjumper, and what this is really about."

The words spilled out of Flareup's vocalizer, "Oh yes, let's all go stare at Cliffjumper and pretend we're there to support him, when really all we want to do is satisfy our own curiosity."

Chromia looked shocked. Ironhide stood, stupidly. Obviously feeling anger, but fighting it. Why bother, she thought, sourly. If you're going to be a bully, be one all the way. Know you throw your weight around, otherwise you're just another kind of hypocrites.

Hypocrites. She was getting tired of no one—including herself—living up to their ideals.

Flareup drooped down. "I'm sorry. Really, look. I'm sorry. You're right. Cliffjumper's what this is all about, and of course I care." She wasn't really sorry—not for what she'd said. She's only spoken her mind. But she was sorry that Chromia looked so hurt. That was what she was apologizing for. And her real argument wasn't with Chromia.

Chromia smiled, shyly. "I know you do. Now, let's go and forget about all this silliness." Chromia linked her fingers with Flareup's. Part of Flareup bridled at her outburst was being labeled 'silliness'. Yes, always like that, she thought. If a femme shows anger it's silliness. Or a programming glitch. Oh, those crazy, temperamental femmes. Suddenly, she couldn't take it any more. The prospect of being jammed in a hangar with all of them to stare at Cliffjumper—all those other mechs who also thought femmes shouldn't fight, or femmes were weak or emotionally frail—she just couldn't bear it. She disentangled her fingers.

"I forgot something," she lied. "I'll catch up with you in a bit, okay?" She smiled so broadly her facial plates strained. One good thing about being a 'crazy temperamental femme' is your emotions could change on a pinprick like this and no one questioned anything. Right now all she wanted to do was get away. From Chromia. From Ironhide. From these thoughts that were just causing so much trouble every time she dared to voice them.

"Want me to come with you?" Chromia offered. Making this, of course, harder than it needed to be. In the nicest possible way, of course. Was she deliberately misreading or was she going to take another opportunity for a 'but Flare, we're worried about you!' stab at her? Flareup was getting tired of it. False sympathy. One that didn't want to understand, because she had been nice to the enemy. How did they deserve to win the war if they could not extend kindness to an enemy? Instead, they'd kept her away from Barricade as though he were contagious.

"No, really. You go on. And," she lowered her optics, "I'm still a little weirded out by large groups right now." Idiotic claim, but again: crazy femme, recently brutalized by the enemy? She could claim almost anything as long as she were trying to prove she was frail and pathetic.

"Sure," Chromia said, gently. "I'm going to go ahead with Ironhide, all right?" Asking permission. That, at least, was her acknowledgment of her sister's wariness of the weapons master.

"Sounds perfect," Flareup said, brightly, hoping to blind them with brightness. "Be right behind you." She wheeled off back to the hangar they'd come from with a feeling of relief expanding her chassis.


	15. Enemy Assault

A/N Brace yourselves: Something actually *happens*. : P

15. _Enemy Assault_

Diego Garcia

Prowl sighed at the empty hangar. Everyone rushing off to greet Cliffjumper on his release from CR—as if Cliffjumper would even be able to remember any of it beyond a sensor-blocked blur of light and noise. Still, these silly rituals. He supposed it helped them cope.

But it did mean that an awful lot of tasks would not going to get done today.

Not only had Optimus not yet made any definitive decision about where they would be moving—as if the few short weeks they had left on Diego Garcia would somehow last forever—but they had yet to even sort through the materials in the hangars and decide what they could take and what they should leave.

So, while everyone else was soothing their consciences about Cliffjumper's well-being—as though he were somehow more alive today than yesterday—he, at least, would get something done. Prowl picked up a datapad and headed to Hangar F. As good a place to start as any, and away from the noise at Delta.

He froze at the entrance to F1. There was noise from the other end of the hangar, the side facing the runway. A loud noise of tearing metal. He raced around the side of the building, as fast as he could while staying quiet against the hard pavement.

The hangar's door had been heaved off its track, one side crumpled in. And inside, noise and movement. He froze.

Starscream. And Prowl was unarmed.

He crouched around the edge of the door, watching. If he could figure out what Starscream was doing here, he could come up with something. His processor raced for possibilities, for motive: sabotage of course. Starscream could be setting a bomb. How had he gotten through security? Oh, right, they had no security any more—the humans' monitoring had proved easily jammable by the Decepticons and all of the Autobots were in Delta with Cliffjumper.

If Prowl had been any other mech, he'd've launched into a series of obscenities. Either blind luck or careful planning had discovered this gap in their security.

Inside, Starscream howled in frustration, his long arms swinging wide, tumbling a pile of carefully stacked crates.

No. Couldn't be sabotage. The sound echoed around the hangar, just as a burst of applause and happy noise came from Delta, several hundred yards away. Should he comm Optimus? No. See if you can figure out what this is all about. Still, the tactical paranoia he was known for made him test his comm. Dead. Someone was jamming all comms. This was bad.

"Starscream," he planted himself in the doorway, with a confidence he did not feel. The jet whirled to him, his irises spiralling to pinpricks, blazing red like targeting lasers.

"Where is he?!" Starscream snarled, bearing down upon Prowl, claws curved to attack.

"Where is who?"

The jet gave another frustrated screech. "Barricade! What have you done with him?!" He dashed aside, furiously, another pile of boxes. "Where!?"

Barricade? Although it did explain why he was here, in F3. This was where they had kept him—he had no doubt presumed that Barricade would be kept in the same place.

"He's not here," Prowl said, blandly. Give nothing away. No tactical advantage to the enemy.

"I can see that, Autobot," Starscream spat. "What have you done with him?"

"Me? I haven't done anything."

"Do not play foolish semantic games with me, Prowl," Starscream hissed, swiping his talons in a warning gesture a few inches from Prowl's visage. The smaller 'bot braced himself, unflinching.

"Prowl?" A voice from Prowl's right shoulder. Flareup, rolling up innocently to what looked to her merely like Prowl examining some sudden damage. "Is everything all right?" He tried to gesture her away with one hand. Starscream caught the gesture, and its meaning. He lunged forward, tearing the door the remainder of the way off its tracks, covering Prowl with one of his chain guns.

Flareup and Starscream stared at each other for a long moment, each one's face unreadable.

"Flareup," Prowl said quietly, "Go get the others."

"Where is Barricade?" Starscream asked, his voice strange.

"I've told yo—" The jet struck at Prowl, dashing him against the steel side of the doorway. Prowl crumpled to the floor, sparking from his left shoulder.

"I was not asking you." Starscream lowered his body closer to the ground, nearly folding his legs flat. "They did not come looking for you, Autobot female. Your friends betrayed you, choosing peace over your safety. I am not making the same choice." His eyes spiralled in and out, as if struggling to focus.

Flareup balanced on her tire, frozen. At first all her processor fed to her was a terrifying series of memories—the jet's hands, huge and sharp, dragging her into the hangar; his awful silence as he locked his hands around her shoulders; before that, his cold brutality at Bourzey. The gash across Barricade's chassis—so clearly Starscream's claws. They'd fought, she knew, over her. They were enemies. Weren't they? Then again, they had both been at Tunguska.

"Why—why do you want him back?"

"Because a warrior does not abandon his own."

Her eyes went hard. "I don't know where he is." She rolled closer to Prowl, activating her energon blade, moving to intercept if Starscream attacked the downed Prowl again. Starscream hissed at the act of aggression, withdrawing into a battle crouch.

"You know, don't you?" Starscream murmured, coaxingly. It was almost, almost absurd, such a mild voice coming from such a heavily-weaponized mech. "Tell me. Tell me and I leave. Think, female. I could have damaged so much. I could have killed your Prowl just now. All I want…," a hitch in his ventilation, "All I want is Barricade's location."

"Starscream," Prowl said. If he could just keep the jet talking, long enough, someone would come investigate. He allowed himself to flop a bit pathetically on the ground, so anyone looking down this way would see a downed mech. "We don't have Barricade. I don't know what you're talking about."

Flareup bent low over Prowl, lifting his shoulders. "Are you all right, Prowl?"

"Fine," he muttered, "Stall him. Until the others…."

"I," Starscream said, quietly. "I am the one who hurt you. On the Nemesis. It was all my idea. Not his. Do not blame him for that."

A lie. She could hear it in his voice, even as she knew the truth. But he was willing to lie to her to save his friend. What were her friends willing to do for her? They weren't even willing to hear her out.

The jet's head shifted from side to side, like an approaching serpent's. "He risked himself to warn you," Starscream continued, feeling desperation. He had to get out of here. And soon. And he could push by the two small Autobots to escape if he needed to. But he felt that the purple one was just at the point of giving him something. "He saved you all, didn't he?"

"Starscream," Prowl repeated, but now his tone was warning.

Starscream edged closer, flexing his hands. Even in the half-light of the hangar, light glittered off the sharp barbs. "He risked, and he lost. And how—how have you treated him? Some manner you are too ashamed to even speak!"

Prowl's optics blanked with a sudden pain. He slumped forward, off Flareup's knees. She rose, her hands trembling, the energon blade now slick with power-core fluid. Her voice shook as well. "The humans have him. He's alive. In some aircraft carrier." She pointed in the direction she'd seen the lift helicopter take. "Somewhere that way. That's all I know." The words poured out of her, as if anxious to get this frank betrayal over with. What was she doing? She didn't even know. Just…something unendurable about Starscream's frustration. And that he had come looking. And no one had tried to rescue her. And…Barricade at the mercy of the humans.

Starscream nodded.

She added, hurriedly, "That makes us even, Decepticon. You tell him that. Even. Do you hear me?" Her voice grated on anger.

"Yes," Starscream said. He stepped forward, leaning over Prowl's inert form, and while she watched, he dragged two of his talons, one on either side of the cut she had made in Prowl's neck-cable. The move sliced away, cleanly, any evidence of the energon blade causing the injury. So everyone would blame him, not her. He lifted his optics. "And now we are not."

He pushed past her and into the sky.

Far to her right, she heard a burst of applause from Delta. She looked down at Prowl, prone, beside her foot tire. His circuit's idiosyncrasies would ensure that Starscream's story, her story, made better sense than the truth.

She didn't know how that made her feel. She didn't know if she could still be an Autobot with such a lie between them.


	16. Where Loyalties Lie

A/N Oh dear. It looks like we have plot ahoy here. And *facepalm* some attempt to bring it post-ROTF canon compliant.

16. _Where Loyalties Lie_

Nemesis

Skywarp was stripping off the jamming nodes, a few kliks ahead of Starscream's return. Two small crews of drones hustled to pick up the nodes and put them back in storage, racing between his legs. "Good news?" he asked as Starscream flew in, twisting to land on his feet.

Starscream looked uncomfortable. "I do not know. It appears that he is online. But that the humans have taken him."

Skywarp frowned. "Megatron…was held by these humans as well?" Skywarp always was good at piecing these things together.

"Megatron was in stasis," Starscream said, helplessly. Not sure how that changed anything. Or if it did.

Skywarp handed the last of the jamming nodes to a crew of drones. "How do we find out where he is?"

"He is on an aircraft carrier. That is all I know."

"That doesn't narrow it down much. Signal?"

"They were able to block my energy signature on Diego Garcia. Doubtless they can use the same technology on Barricade in one of these carriers." Starscream crossed over to fill out the flight log, more for some distraction than anything else. He'd thought, the flight back here, that Flareup had given him some useful information. But suddenly, once again Skywarp threw his shortcomings back in his face. All without meaning to, of course. Which made it worse. There was no vindictiveness in Skywarp's spark toward his Trine mate. It just happened, all the time, that Skywarp highlighted Starscream's inadequacies.

"What do we normally do in these situations?"

"Normally? We ask Barricade." Or Soundwave, but somehow he didn't really want to bring the satellite in on this. He was aware how bitter he sounded.

Skywarp brushed against him, coding himself into the flight log as well. "We'll find a way," he said, softly.

"A suggestion?" The two jets whirled to face Vortex, lounging in the hangar's shipside door. "Might want to bring your copter friend on board."

"You?" Starscream's snort was derisive.

An unreadable expression flickered across Vortex's optics, and his rotors went rigid. "I was talking about Blackout, actually. The one who spent the last mission window in Tunguska? Yeah, maybe you don't have the monopoly on giving a scrap about Barricade, you know? Just thinking, that following that, you might not have exclusive access to all the clever ideas."

"What are you even doing here?"

"Duty officer. My job to investigate flights not pre-logged."

"And the results of your investigation?" Starscream's optics narrowed.

"Seeker Binary on a compatibility flight, looks like," Vortex said, blandly.

Starscream hissed. "Why would you lie for us?" Behind Starscream, Skywarp looked intrigued. As if somehow, here, something was being revealed.

"Because what Megatron doesn't know, he can't stop." He shrugged in acknowledgement of Skywarp's curious head tilt. "We lose mechs all the time. This is a war. But," he shook his head, "Not to the humans. We don't have the best rules of capture, not like the Autobots," he ignored Starscream's outraged hiss, "But even we have our boundaries. And the humans crossed them with Megatron." He looked up, defying Starscream to call him out for eavesdropping. "And by the way," he shifted his feet uncomfortably, "Skywarp, Megatron wants to see you."

Skywarp ventilated himself to a false kind of patience. Summoned to speak to Megatron, and then forced to wait. Such petty power games. Had Megatron always been like this or had his captivity by the humans changed him? He began to get a glimmer of understanding why Starscream might not have had much to say. How does one report this sort of casual and petty disrespect in a way that does not smack of discontent? Better, perhaps, to say nothing. Better on one level.

He waited for Megatron to finish reading—very thoroughly, apparently—the latest report on his datapad. Then he waited another handful of kliks while Megatron eyed him up and down, studying the changes his new alt form made on him. The gaze was partly curiosity, but partly, also, intimidation. I shall stare at you, you must allow me to stare. And judge.

He bore it all with patience. This is not about me. This is about Starscream. And…he felt a sudden urge that he tried fiercely to separate from his processing. He would not allow himself to side automatically with Starscream. He must be objective. But he would not, he resolved, let Megatron handle the matter. If, in fact, there was anything truly that needed handling.

"Have you made any progress?" Somehow, from Megatron's vocalizer, it sounded already like an accusation. You should have done more by now. I should not have to call you here.

"I have not seen him in a long time," Skywarp said. "It takes time to rebuild that trust."

"I thought you said your Trine bond was as strong as ever." A more direct assault. Skywarp winced for how Starscream would have reacted.

"It is, but you want me," he said, slyly, "to be certain, don't you? You do not want me to merely speculate and cobble together some hasty suppositions." Let's see if Megatron caught that parry.

"Of course not. Any evidence you bring must be completely objective." No: he missed it entirely. Either he was unused to oblique challenges, or so caught up in his own web he didn't notice another strand. If he wanted objectively acceptable evidence…. Skywarp did not want to bring that thought to its conclusion.

"Objective evidence…for his unhappiness." Skywarp spoke a bit more aggressively this time, reminding Megatron of his early charge. Time to see if he would amend that, or continue that farce.

Megatron tilted his head, coyly. The effect in all was more than a bit ghastly. A hint of a smile. "To see if his unhappiness has led to…unwise choices."

"Of course." Skywarp knew when to nod and obey. Still, he couldn't resist one last challenge. "My lord," he said, dropping his eyes. "Surely, in his defense, he was instrumental in retrieval of the Tunguska energon. Without his help…"

Megatron waved a hand. "Yes, yes. He knows where he is best. But some things, Skywarp, are above his capabilities." Skywarp couldn't tell if Megatron meant that to sting or not. It did.

"So, what are the plans for the energon? I hear some of the more damaged mechs are scheduled to come out of CR." His turn of tone to the casual irritated Megatron, but Skywarp decided he liked Megatron slightly irritated. He had called Skywarp here, toyed with him, yet relied on Skywarp's honesty. He couldn't risk putting Skywarp off much more. Not if he expected Skywarp to do his bidding. Even Megatron realized his goads had limits.

"I have a plan."

"I am certain you have several." Let Megatron hear flattery in that if he wished. Skywarp intended none.

Megatron leaned back against his chair, spreading his knees apart, steepling his claws together. For a long moment, he observed Skywarp through the tangle of his long digits. "The Fallen," he said, softly. "He made a promise. I gave him everything in service of that reward. And in the end, he tried to betray me." His eyes went hard. Skywarp understood: this was to be a lesson for him—do not betray Megatron. He nodded.

Megatron continued. "He promised, and he shall keep that promise."

"He's dead."

"At the moment." A vague gesture with one hand, as though that were the merest inconvenience.

"You can't—return him to life?"

A sharp bark of a laugh. "Not to life. His plans conflicted with mine. Too old fashioned. Too small in scope. I do not need another," he stressed the adjective, "dissenter in my ranks. But he has power. And if I can access that power, without the nuisance of his sentience…." He let the thought trail off. His optics watched Skywarp's face carefully. To bring his point home (he was not one for subtlety, Skywarp noted), he added, "You have promised me, as well."


	17. Failed Confession

17. _Failed Confession_

**Diego Garcia**

Starscream had barely gone airborne when Flareup hit her comm. It stuttered for a klik, jammed, before it fell crystal clear and quiet. Quickly, pressing on either end of the damaged power core cable, she put an all-channels out for help, trying to concentrate only on this moment and not the past few kliks or the next few cycles. Just here, just now, just stopping Prowl from being seriously injured. She'd have plenty of time to regret the decision of a moment. Now was not the time.

Feet pounded up to her from Delta, a crowd separating her gently from Prowl's inert form, murmuring comforting phrases at her like, "It'll be okay," and "Don't worry, Ratchet's here."

She had bigger worries. Though she hated how that sounded.

After they dragged Prowl away, the questions began. All she could manage to do at first was shake her head and choke out "Starscream." It was enough, of course, to send them down the entirely-wrong path. Oh they figured out the jet had been there—the damage to the hangar door spoke enough testimony to that. But the rest of it they got wrong: why he was there; who attacked Prowl; and why she found herself, suddenly, unable to speak.

Their pity was palpable. The poor victim, victimized to paralysis by the sight of her tormenter. Oh if only it were true. If only it had happened that way. But it hadn't, and their pity struck her as something that might have been funny if it wasn't so horrible.

Sideswipe threw a protective arm around her shoulders, pulling her audio to his mouth. "Sorry, Flare. So sorry. We should know better than to let you be alone."

The words stung a double chill in her fuel tank—first for what he didn't know he said—that she wasn't trustworthy to be left alone; and second for the notion she needed to be protected. Would they never stop with this femme-weakness stuff?

Then again, here she was, feeding right into it, and a part of her desperately wanting to keep feeding into it, knowing that as soon as she told the truth, all the sympathy, all the understanding or caring she'd ever felt from them would be gone. Over. She had…collaborated with the enemy. She had betrayed them.

Had she? Had she really? She had given up a piece of information, yes. But she gave up the humans, not the Autobots. And the humans hadn't done much of anything to deserve her protection or loyalty.

It still felt like a betrayal of some sort, no matter how cleverly she tried to dance around it. And she had a choice—to speak or to stay silent. All it would take was for her to say nothing. Maybe cling a little more obviously to Sideswipe's armor, maybe go and demand her red optic be replaced or mutter a few comments about bad memory purges to Ratchet and…they'd construct a story of a vicious, though pointless, attack. That a Decepticon would somehow infiltrate a base, attack one mech non-lethally, and leave. They would believe it, because it fit their prejudices. Victim, victimizer. Terrorizing and irrational enemy. Mindless, pointless brutality. Femmes too weak to fight back. It was what they wanted to hear. All she had to do was sit quiet and let them tell themselves that story.

But.

It wasn't right. On so many levels—that she'd be living under a lie; that for once a Decepticon would not deserve the horrible tales spread about him. Did that matter? She found that it did. How dare we dream of peace while clutching so tightly to prejudice? How dare she think of understanding and comfort when she would be buying it with her honor?

She pushed away from Sideswipe. "I did it." Her voice shook, at first barely louder than the hum of her engines. "Sideswipe, I did it. I attacked Prowl."

"What?" He blinked, entirely uncomprehending. "Flareup, no way."

She forced her voice to be stronger. "Yes. I told Starscream where Barricade was, as much as I knew, but before I did that, I knocked Prowl out." She heard a growing murmur around her as her story spread, like ripples. She waited for them to recoil. To realize what she had done. To reject her. She braced herself.

"Flareup," Ironhide's voice. The last mech she wanted to see, but the one, she thought, who would at least see the truth.

"I did," she said, jutting her chin defiantly. The tremors that had shaken her body, her hands, fled. This felt awful, but pure. This was the right thing. Lying, or even lying by omission—she could not hold her head up with that on her conscience. Truth would guide her, a shining beacon. It was the Autobot way.

"Primus," Ironhide breathed, pushing Sideswipe aside to take her by the shoulders, "I knew they did something to you. I knew it. It explains everything." His hands were gentle on her shoulder armor, his eyes soft with something like empathy.

She blinked, confused. "Ironhide, I—"

He raised his voice so the others could hear. "Arcee was the first to suggest it. That they planted some sort of shell in her while she was down. This was probably just a test of it."

"What?" Flareup tried to twist her shoulders out of Ironhide's grasp. This was ridiculous. Arcee? Arcee had said that? Her own sister? She looked around, her eyes wide with panic, growing wider as she saw the mixed looks of pity and comprehension dawn across their faces.

"No!" she shouted. "This isn't a shell program! I did it. I knew what I was doing! You have to believe me!" She fell to her knee-axle, finally slipping out of Ironhide's grasp. "I did it. Why won't you believe me?" Her voice was desperate.

She caught one murmur from the crowd. "How do we know," the mech whispered, "that this isn't part of the shell, too?"

She closed her optics, blue and red, against despair.


	18. Petty Freedom

A/N Sorry for delay. :c Fun fun family fun. Those of you who remember Prisoner will remember this week's special guest….

18. _Petty Freedom_.

USS Dreadnought

The night-duty engineer had finally conceded defeat with the stasis cuffs after a cycle, a broken wrench, and an accident that punctured one of Barricade's wrist tires. After that last one, and Barricade's growl, he had been reluctant to continue. So Barricade's first night in human captivity was spent cramped, injured and pretty much topping off the misery scale.

Don't expect things to improve, he told himself. It goes only one place from here, you know. That place being, well…why do you think they have you over the water? How easy to just drop your offlined frame—or bits of it—over the side?

Fine. Starscream's words floated back to him, and he clung to them, probably because they were Starscream's. You can't choose the time or manner, only how you meet it. Right. How could he meet it? How could he keep himself ready to meet it for cycle after cycle? Warriors could prepare themselves for battle—they could see it coming. Would he?

The door rattled open and one of the guards came in, glaring, pointing a weapon at his face. Barricade resisted the urge to roll his optics. After the guard, a smaller human, in coveralls, entered pulling a wheeled cart. The coveralled human had a small frame and fast, twitchy gestures. Reminded Barricade a bit of Frenzy, really, even to the piercing blue eyes.

"Hi!" the scrawny one said. "I'm Max. I'm one of the engineers." He wiped his hands down his coveralls—the only sign he was nervous. "Dave said he gave up on those cuffs. Would you mind if I had a look?"

Barricade narrowed the focus of his optics, but extended his bound wrists to the human. This Max person couldn't do a worse job than the one last night, and he would dearly love to be able to move his shoulders. Or transform. At the very least, another failure would be amusing. Anything better than being stuck alone with the rays of sunshine that were his thoughts.

He watched as Max studied the cuffs, and then turned to his cart and dug to fill his pockets with absurdly tiny tools. Max. The name sounded familiar. His curiosity got the better of him. "You knew Starscream."

Max looked up. "The jet? Yeah. Oh boy. I got in sooooo much trouble for that."

"For the leg." Barricade winced. Probably shouldn't have let on he knew that much. Probably shouldn't have started this conversation in the first place. Fraggin' blank room was destroying his hold on himself already.

"Yeah." Max's olive complexion turned dark with a blush. "You know about that, huh?" A bitter laugh. "Guess I'm notorious."

Barricade shrugged, awkwardly. "Worse things to be known for." Like mass murder. Of your own mechs.

"Yeah," Max said, ducking his head back over the stasis cuffs. "I was sure surprised when I got the call to do this. Thought I'd be blacklisted forever, you know, repairing toasters and televisions for the rest of my life."

Interesting. Sternburgh's 'team' wasn't all on the up-and-up. Barricade wasn't sure what to make of this. He felt the familiar stir of something he didn't know, some puzzle he hadn't figured out, calling to him.

Max sat back, his weight on Barricade's talons, unconsciously. "Can you tell me a bit about how these things are supposed to work?"

"The cuffs? Standard Autobot equipment." Little dig—surprised you've never seen them before. Autobots must try to play themselves all nicey-nice to the humans. He was rewarded by a frown from Max. "Variable charge. You can set them for different levels of stasis—high level and the mech is basically a statue—he has passive receptors only." Barricade skipped the part about how a mech in full stasis would eventually die. He was sure the humans were cooking up some pretty creative ways to offline him, and he wasn't about to hamper their creativity. "On the low end, they just hold the wrists or ankles together. They're in the middle right now. I can move, but I can't do anything strenuous. You know. Like run. Mad dash from one corner to the other." He smiled wryly. Decepticons didn't use stasis cuffs. Well, not at the low end.

"Ah!" Max said to himself. "So that's what that was." He dove back into the cuffs' connecting mechanism and prodded around. "Gonna need…." He pushed back again, pulling at the wavy black hair behind one ear. "Be right back!" He dashed out of the room, the door swinging only half-shut behind him.

The guard glared at him, hefting his weapon. Suddenly, Max seemed like much better company. Barricade settled his gaze on the guard's eyes, spiralling his optics small. Just…staring back. Silence was something he could run for cycles.

The guard was just beginning to duck his head to break Barricade's cool gaze when Max burst back in holding a squiggly piece of metal. "Took me forever to find one, can you believe it?" he chirped.

"A hanger?" the guard asked.

"A metal one! Everything's plastic nowadays. Stupid plastic. Nonconductive, non-pliable plastic. Sucks. Nothing like good old metal." He bent over the cuffs again, clambering over Barricade's arm to get a better angle. He paused, reaching into his coverall pockets for a pair of gloves. "No good if I electrocute myself doing this."

"I wouldn't mind, except for the smell," Barricade muttered.

Max burst out with a laugh. "It would ruin my budding career as a mechanical genius, though!" This Max creature was weird. And really did remind Barricade of Frenzy. Max reached in with his insulated gloves and fiddled the hanger's two ends into position. "And now…." He took a small box from the pile of equipment he'd made on the floor and attached alligator clips to the hanger. "This may sting a bit." Barricade nodded his head—who cares? Get the damn cuffs off. Max grinned, taking this for approval. He flipped a switch on his box. The cuffs popped open, startling all of them with the loud clatter they made falling to the deck.

Max whooped. "And THAT's why they hired me!" He bent down and started dragging the cuffs over to his cart, possessively. Well, Barricade wasn't going to fight him for them. And, oh look, Autobot technology in the hands of the humans. Optimus Prime would be blowing a coolant seal if he knew. If he'd thought it through Barricade would never have been cuffed to begin with. The thought cheered Barricade up considerably. Still causing problems to the enemy, even at my lowest moment. Maybe I am an unknowing genius. Maybe…maybe I could take this further. He felt something stir to life within him.

Meanwhile, he took the opportunity to flex his wrists, wincing at the soreness from the punctured tire, but otherwise enjoying the sudden rush of sensation through his entire frame. Back at full power. Hurray. For what it was worth. He would find a way to make it worth his while.


	19. Faulty Memory

19. _Faulty Memory_

Diego Garcia

**Hangar Delta 1**

He knew better than to say it out loud, but Cliffjumper was secretly a little relieved at the ruckus caused by Prowl's arrival in the repair hangar. It was great to have his friends around to cheer him on, and cheer him up, but honestly, he felt more than a little self-conscious—they were all staring at his new face, which he hadn't even seen for himself. Ratchet assured him it was the same as the old one, or would be, as soon as he'd mixed the right color match for the paint. But still. It felt a little weird.

And this was not how he wanted them to see him. Not as a speech-slurring half-cripple, half immobilized on a repair frame. He wasn't a patient: he was a warrior. A hero. But it was hard to be a hero, or feel like one, when sensor blocks to his new jaw caused it to gap open, and damped systems alarms made it hard to keep a thought straight in his head.

So he smiled—or hoped it looked like a smile with his unresponsive new plates—and did his best. Until the mechs carrying Prowl rushed in and the crowd of gawpers booted out and took the pressure off.

"All right," he heard Ratchet saying, in the same cool, distant voice he'd heard the medic use on him just a few cycles ago. "Prowl? You with me?"

A pause. Then Prowl's voice, a little thin. Cliffjumper hoped he didn't sound as bad himself. "I'm right here, Ratchet."

"Systems?"

"Functional. Thank you for the repairs."

"Do you remember what happened?" Another voice, more strident. Cliffjumper turned his head, wincing, and saw Ironhide's bulky shape bending over the repair frame, silhouetted in the afternoon light pouring in from the hangar door.

Prowl paused, considering. That wasn't weakness, Cliffjumper knew. That was Prowl. He'd never speak before thinking two or three times over what he was going to say. Caution. "It is…unclear," he admitted. "Starscream was in Hanger F3. I went to investigate."

"You don't have to try to remember," Ratchet said, shooting Ironhide a dark look. "Power core repairs can cause memory loss." The sensor block was still dulling Cliffjumper's processor, making him feel lost and unable to track. Frustrating. Prowl had an excuse for his poor memory: Cliffjumper had none. All he remembered was running to help Sideswipe, and Sideswipe's angry rebuff. 'I don't need your fraggin' help'. Yeah.

"No," Prowl said. "I can do it. Starscream. He wanted Barricade. He threw me against the wall." He shifted, one hand touching the dented armor along one shoulder. "Flareup was there." Ironhide muttered something, leaning forward. Cliffjumper shifted on his repair frame. Action and he had missed out. "And…I don't remember. I remember being hit," he lifted a hand to the back of his head, "But I don't remember how."

"Flareup," Ironhide said. "She says she did it."

Ratchet's dark look turned into a glare. "Ridiculous."

"She swears she did. Arcee thinks it's some sort of shell-bug they were testing and—"

"It is possible," Prowl said. "A shell." He looked uncomfortable. Not from the pain, but because he didn't remember what happened. Prowl hated not knowing. Almost as much as he hated when things didn't make sense. And none of this made sense.

"It wasn't Flareup," Ratchet said, flatly.

"She says she did!" Ironhide said, hotly. "I know you think I've got some sort of grudge against her, but this is what she said!" Flareup, Cliffjumper thought, trying to piece together his own story. She'd worked on him under fire, trying to get him mobile. But then she'd launched into some pacifist tirade that the middle of the battlefield was really not the time nor place for. Could she—could she really have attacked Prowl? The one who couldn't even shoot at drones?

Ratchet shook his head, impatiently. "Ironhide, I saw the fraggin' injury. It wasn't caused by an energon blade. Too wide for one, and energon blades cauterize. Prowl's injury was cause by a straight metal cut. Like Starscream's talons."

Ironhide gaped. "But—then…why would she say she did?"

"I have no idea," Ratchet said. "But I'm telling you what I saw. There is no way Flareup caused that injury."

Ironhide subsided, frustrated. "It's what she said," he said, lamely. Aware, acutely aware, that everyone here was thinking he was escalating some absurd hostility toward Flareup. They'd had a big blow up after Tunguska, about her protecting the fraggin' Decepticon, but he'd given in. He was wrong. He was more upset that he still struggled to play by the Autobot rules, after all this time. That was what he was mad at. Not Flareup. She followed the rules easily, instinctively—someone born and raised to principles. He had a hard time switching off his Decepticon training.

"It could…it could still be a shell program," Prowl said, carefully. "To make her claim it."

Ratchet shrugged. "Or guilt. You know. She sees Starscream, feels responsible that he's here, that she didn't do enough. She attacked him at Bourzey and, well, that didn't go so well for her. So she feels powerless and to blame that he's still functioning and sees him attack Prowl and…roundabout, her guilt becomes her claiming responsibility."

"That's a little…oblique," Prowl said.

"Sideswipe," Ratchet dropped his voice, so that Cliffjumper had to strain his audio to hear, "he blames himself for Sunstreaker. Not that far a stretch."

"Especially," Ironhide added, "how confused she is about Barricade. She thinks he's a fraggin' victim."

"You made him one," Ratchet snapped. "In front of her." Ironhide recoiled.

Cliffjumper was furious about what he'd missed out on. Fraggin' CR. Seems like he goes down and…everything happens at once. "Maybe she just froze and blames herself for that?" he said. Three heads turned to him, half alarmed that he was eavesdropping. "You know, feels like she should have done more to help Prowl?" He could have done more to help Sideswipe. If only he'd been thinking straight. Still. Could someone who worked so calmly on him under the steady rain of weapons fire be that terrified of one 'con alone? Maybe. Maybe it was Starscream that did her in. Or maybe she'd felt safety in the numbers at Tunguska she didn't feel then. He'd never felt that sort of paralysis, but he'd seen it before, dozens of times. It happened. It wasn't her fault.

"She was helping me," Prowl said slowly. "I remember telling her to stall him."

"That's it, then," Cliffjumper said, slowly. "Obviously her stall backfired, and as a result you got more injured and he got away. Frag it, I'd blame myself if it happened to me."

Ironhide nodded, more than a little relieved. That, he could see. It made almost as much sense as the shell theory. More than that, he could relate to it. He felt as if a weight had lifted off his shoulder assemblies. "Makes perfect sense." Either way, it wasn't Flareup's fault. And he didn't want to fight with his own team anymore.

"It does," Prowl said, "fit all of the evidence. If Ratchet says it's plausible for her to project her guilt into an attack." Prowl admitted he was no good at the illogic that guided mech conduct. Tactics, yes. Reason, yes. Emotion? No.

Ratchet ran one hand along his jaw, considering. "She's been through a lot. And she's so wound up. She's refused every offer of help." He shook his head.

"And now look what it's done," Ironhide said. "She can't even think straight. Blaming herself for being afraid."

"This could be the break we need to get through to her. Maybe now she'll open up a bit."

Cliffjumper smiled, feeling his new plates' unmachined surfaces grate against each other. "I can help. She'll talk to me." Ironhide eyes weighed on him, considering. Cliffjumper added, "I've got no baggage with her. The rest of you have tried and blown it, right?" Ratchet still looked dubious. "What? Prowl's no good at this sort of thing anyway, and he'd only remind her of it. Ironhide—way too much backstory. You, Ratch, she'd see coming a parsec away. Optimus would be way too intimidating—like a dressing down. Even if he didn't mean it. And Sideswipe--?"

"He's right, but…,"

Cliffjumper shrugged. "Tell her I want to talk about me, if you like. That I'm having issues about what's happened and…." He wasn't having issues. But he did want to have those long cycles filled in. And if it helped Flareup at the same time…?

"Where _is_ Optimus, anyway?" Ironhide asked. Maybe, seeing this, Optimus wouldn't write him off so easily next time.

Ratchet sighed. "He's over with the humans."

Cliffjumper spoke a klik before Ironhide would have. "So, we have a fraggin' attack with casualties and he's strokin' up humans? After what they did to us?" No one needed to comment on that. There was really nothing to say.


	20. Challenge to Authority

20. _Challenge to Authority from a Former Mutineer. _

Nemesis

Blackout switched the dial so the dilute cleanser from the ceiling nozzles switched to include decontamination filters. All of that radiation and flux from Tunguska not only clotted his joints, it made him smell pretty awful. And decon gave him time to think, or not think, what was next. Gave him something to do.

The decon agent stung his metal skin, seeping under the armor plates, washing away the fine powder of the radioactive dust. It couldn't, however, wash away the tight hot feeling, like a kink in his power core hose. Barricade was alive. Or at least, not dead at Tunguska. But…now what? What good does that do either of them? Is that hope? It doesn't feel or look like hope. He is alive, but as good as dead, as good as lost.

We spent resources, megacycles, lives, trying to recover Megatron. We will spend nothing on Barricade. Blackout knew he'd have to account, sooner or later, for this mission window. Time the Decepticon cause claimed. Wasted. Looking for something no 'con had any right to pretend to have. The mission comes first. Always the mission. He knew that. He followed Starscream's orders, for the mission. But, what was the mission? And what would be worth all of this loss in the end?

This wasn't his first loss. Blackout at one level has no idea why this one bothered him more than the others. Scorponok. Demolishor. Frenzy. They'd all given their lives, and been closer to Blackout than the abrasive CIO. So…why was this one bothering him so much?

"You are here," the voice from the doorway startled him.

"Starscream," he acknowledged, shutting off the ceiling taps.

The jet made a show of sniffing the air. "Radioactivity," he said, blandly.

Blackout's fists clenched. "Yeah. I was at Tunguska." He wasn't going to hide it. He had nothing to hide, other than an admission of weakness—that he cared at all.

"Vortex told me as much."

The air chilled the decon agent on Blackout's metal skin. Why would Vortex sell him out like that? Starscream seemed to read his thoughts.

"He told me as he intercepted my return from looking for Barricade at Diego Garcia." It was an admission more than Blackout's own semi-defiant statement.

"Finally located a conscience, huh?" He hated to admit he enjoyed the twitch across the jet's face, even while another part of him noted that the comment really struck raw

"It is not a matter of conscience," Starscream said stiffly. "It is a matter of principle. A warrior does not—"

"Oh slag you and that old 'warrior' line. Old ways, Starscream. Old, dead ways. You're the only one holding onto them." Funny to think how long he'd tried to get his own hands around them. Seemed not worth it anymore.

"I came to find you," the bronze mech hissed, "because I thought you would want to help. I can see now that your assistance would be useless. I am better off on my own." He turned on his heel, his spurs skreaking across the metal floor.

"Does that help, huh?" Blackout felt a white fury build inside him, some swirling mass of all of those he had lost. They called him a targetlocker? He was. And now he was locked on Starscream. "Does it help to have no friends? Do you feel it less that way?" Starscream's back was to him, turned to leave. All he could see was the expanse of the engine mounts, and above that, the helm, tilted downward, as the jet studied the floor. Blackout felt more words boil out of him. "You didn't even like him. He certainly left you on your own before. So, why pretend like you care now? Especially after the hangar?"

He watched the taloned hands curved into prickled fists. Oh, good. Take a swing at me, Seeker. Primus, I want it. I want to hit…something. I want to blame something so badly you have no idea. I want to do something, anything, even if it's an act of violence.

"I have," the jet said, softly, "my issues with Barricade. But they are none so irremediable that I would wish him captured by the humans."

Blackout felt something cold click in his ventral line, like the worst possible scenario falling into place. And it swept his anger away as if flash frozen fire. "Humans."

"An aircraft carrier. I do not know its location or designation."

"But—but we can figure that out. Narrow it down at least. Simple calculations and radiants." It would take tedious and slow flying, but that was his specialty.

"Perhaps." Cutting him down.

Blackout advanced, grabbing one of the engines hard enough to dent the armor. Starscream hissed in pain, his shoulder gyros tightening, but other than that, he was immobile. "You listen to me, Starscream. You do not leave me out of this. You don't want my help? Frag you. Bet Barricade doesn't want to be human-bait right now either. You don't always get what you want." He jerked hard on the engine mount, forcing Starscream to stagger back a step.

The jet jerked away, snarling. He glared over his shoulder at Blackout for a long moment. "Fine," he said, dangerous and hard. "Provided that you obey orders without an argument, this time."

Oh, wrong move. "I obeyed your slaggin' orders. If I hadn't, Barricade would be here. That's what comes from following your lead."

Starscream spat an inchoate wrathful syllable at him, and pushed him back, storming the exit.

"Losing your objective edge, aren't you?" Blackout taunted at the retreating back. Blackout watched him go, the emotion draining quickly, sheeting off him like cleanser. And he realized he'd blown it. He'd done it once again, focussing too much on a small goal, letting the larger one pass him by. In his desire to hurt the jet, he'd damaged his chances of helping. Hampered the effort at least. And every cycle that passed, who knows what it was for Barricade?

He hated that he did this. Always did this. Not just the battle, but the past, the future as well. He lost sight of the goal for the target. He just shrunk down to a pinpoint. The enemy becomes everything. He was tired of the enemy becoming everything.

I struggle with pain. I saw those above me as those who had mastered it. I thought the answer was that they shrunk themselves smaller, so small that pain was infinitesimally tiny, barely noticeable. I thought that's how they did it. Then I thought that they let the pain take over themselves—hollowed themselves out, vehicles for, receptacles for pain. Became replaced with it.

But. All attempts to erase the self. To disappear. To die before you actually die. To be already numb, already dead. That's how he thought you were supposed to prepare yourself to be a warrior.

Then, Barricade. With all of his instability. His emotional turmoil. His ability to get under anyone's skin, show the numbness for a lie. All of that 'distant warrior' rhetoric blazed out like a flame in vacuum when Barricade showed up. Even Starscream couldn't keep himself together. Even with Megatron, there was something the leader couldn't touch in Starscream—the reason Megatron kept it up was that he realized that there was some core he couldn't reach, some wall he couldn't crack, no matter how much force or how much intimidation. Even with Megatron, Starscream never lost it. He took beatings. But he never flashed. He never flared up, lost control. Blackout had seen him in the hangarbay holding the cyclebot fighting for control. Not of her, but of himself. As if Barricade had somehow reached into him and stirred something up. Walked right through the wall that Megatron couldn't even see.

And Blackout too, more than a little raw from the loss of Scorponok. And Barricade had come in and goaded and obstructed and been a pain in the ass. But a pain in the ass who kept him moving.

Oh this was awful. What now? Move on? Move on. What choice? In time, the pain would fade. In time. And there would be a hard numbness, like a callous, in his memory, right next to the callous for Scorponok. Demolishor. The others. Hard callouses until there was nothing but hardness. Until his entire memory was numb. And then what?


	21. War of Words

21. _War of Words_

Diego Garcia

Optimus couldn't help but wish someone other than Colonel Axelrod was in command of the demobilizing forces at Diego Garcia. The troops were all volunteers, who'd agreed to stay on and assist the Autobots for the 30 days of their time left on the base, but the colonel was, as Sideswipe would say, not a fan.

More than that, he seemed downright hostile.

"I don't think," the base commander was saying, "that we're really that interested in your proposal." He stood on the top of one of the gantries pulled from Alpha Hangar, eye-to-optic with the Autobot.

"I am merely," Optimus said, "trying to respect your wishes while still remaining prepared for all eventualities."

"All eventualities except that you Autobots are the problem." Axelrod folded his arms over his chest.

"It is highly unlikely that they will leave simply because we do."

"Have you ever tried it? Honestly? In the entire history of your wars with them, have you ever honestly given over the battlefield and watched what happened?" Axelrod squinted, skeptically. "You tell me one story, ONE story, of some planet burnt to a cinder or crushed under Decepticon dominion, and I'll grant your point."

Optimus frowned. "We have fought to victory or stalemate. We cannot allow them even one victory."

Axelrod smirked. "Right. And how great were those places after your 'stalemates'? Or even your victories?"

Optimus had no answer.

"Freedom," Axelrod sneered, "is the right of all sentient beings, right? Isn't that one of your favorite catchphrases? So. Where's our freedom to choose? Where's our freedom NOT to live under Autobot dominion?" He unfolded his arms, leaning on the gantry's railing.

"We are not a dominion, Colonel. We have no political aims. All we want is your assistance in transportation in case the Decepticons attack. And a place to base ourselves out of."

"Those sound like political aims to me," the colonel said, blandly. "A room of your own and the keys to someone else's car. With them paying for the gas."

"We can…we can reimburse you for the expense."

"With what?"

"We can…we can find your precious minerals on asteroids."

"Flood the market and make even gold valueless. So, ruin the economy. Nice."

"You must have other mineral resource needs we could fill."

"None I can think of." Axelrod raised one eyebrow in contempt, enjoying Optimus's discomfiture.

"We can repay you by our assistance in defeating the Decepticons should they attack. And helping with the rebuilding efforts. That is," Optimus lowered his optics for a moment, "something we have been remiss in. We have caused damage and not redressed that."

"Not interested."

"Major Lennox," Optimus began.

Axelrod rolled his eyes. "Soon-to-be-brought-up-on-charges Lennox, yes?"

"Charges for what?" Behind him, outside, he heard the distant boom of an aircraft taking off. It reassured him that the humans still did their drills.

Axelrod pursed his lips. "Treason, if he's discussing national security matters with an alien." A ghost of a nasty smile.

"Major Lennox feels that we can still be a valuable asset," Optimus finished, lamely.

"Major Lennox is unaware of our other assets. In short, Optimus Prime, I hate to tell you, but we don't need you any more. You have been replaced. In fact. As a gesture of goodwill, for all the good times we've had together," Axelrod's voice was flat, "You mess with us, and you'll get a taste of our latest R&D, too." That nasty smile again. It struck Optimus that Axelrod physically resembled an Earth alligator. Vicious, patient, and hungry.


	22. Desperate Fill of Fleeting Hours

22. _Desperate Fill of Fleeting Hours_

USS Dreadnought

"So, what do you think of this one?" Sternburgh sat next to Barricade, well within his talons' slashing range, either ignorant of, or boldly facing down the danger. He gestured at the image on the screen, where one apparently American soldier sat across a table from another person in a loose white shirt.

"Which one?" He'd been playing this game—whatever it was—for the last few hours with Sternburgh. Two games, really: first the 'what's going on on this tape?' and then the other game above that, where he pretended to be stupid. Both were equally not-so-entertaining. But they were also, both of them, way better than the several hours he'd spent staring at the walls. Even knowing the isolation was probably part of their approach to break him down didn't help. That was the worst part—knowing what they were doing to you didn't help at all.

The blonde female, Yee, he'd gathered her name was, tapped the screen on the white-shirt's side. "This one."

Barricade shrugged. "You won't get anything out of him."

"We did."

"Then it's a lie."

The two exchanged a look. "He broke for us. Hard," Yee said.

Barricade gave her his 'sure, I'll play along' face. "And you broke him how?"

Yee shifted on her feet. Sternburgh shrugged, as if it weren't worth it to hold back any information. Well, no point really. Not like Barricade had anyone he could run and tell. "Threatened rendition to Yemen. They have a long history of torturing political prisoners. It worked."

"It did NOT work," Barricade said, confidently. "He lied." Part of him discovered it enjoyed watching Sternburgh's discomfiture. Very much. A small enough thing to live for, but he'd had a fairly small life.

"You're right," Sternburgh said, bitterly. "He lied. We sent men into an ambush." Barricade got the feeling the pronoun should be singular. The fact that Sternburgh felt comfortable more or less revealing his own foul-ups to Barricade told Barricade that the clock was ticking down on his lifespan. Better enjoy what you got left. Yeah. Good luck with that. "How do you know he lied?"

Barricade sighed. "Look, I'm just going to presume you guys work exactly like the Autobots. All of these policies, these rules, these attempts to sanitize war and what war is and what you do. That includes prisoner capture and interrogation, right?" He waited for a slow nod from Sternburgh. Yee was glaring at him. He wondered what her deal was. "So, you have all of these rules. Someone getting captured by you knows what will and will not happen to him. He knows how far you'll go and where you'll stop."

"Yes," Yee said, "We aren't savages. It's better to surrender to us than die."

"That," Barricade said, pointedly, enjoying the naked hatred on her face. She did not deal well with flat contradiction. "Is your first assumption. That in this case is wrong. This human," he gestured at the screen, " does not believe that it is better to surrender than die. In fact, if he had any weakness at all, that's where it is—that he got caught in the first place, and missed his chance to die heroically."

"And?" A challenge.

"And? And he knows all the rules. He knows your whole system. And he's playing you by your own rules. That rendition? He knew you wouldn't do it. Not so long as he gave you something. Because he knows that if you KNEW, even in your spark, that he knew about this ambush and it was all a set-up, he knew that your system would find a way to inject just enough doubt that he wouldn't be held accountable."

His smirk faded, seeing Sternburgh's inappropriately pleased expression. Something wasn't right here. He'd just insulted their system. Shown them up. Sternburgh should not be looking so…damn…pleased.

"Is that what you're doing?" Sternburgh said, archly.

He flinched. Was it? Think about it later. You'll have plenty of time to think about it later. Or if not, because you're offline, it'll save you a world of regret. Only thing worth procrastinating was regret. His optics narrowed. "No, because first of all I don't think it's better to die heroically than to surrender. The rest falls apart from there."

Sternburgh cocked an eyebrow at him—a visible signal, like a flag, that he was not quite finished with exploring that notion. But that he'd put it aside just for the moment. He gestured back to the screen, where the white-shirted man had tilted back in his chair, the very picture of ease. "So. What would you say we do? To prevent it from happening again?"

"Simple." Barricade folded his arms over his chassis, closing up as much as he could. "Change the rules. If he doesn't know the rules, he has no control. Not only can he not manipulate you by your own decency, you erode his sense of control. Which is the only thing he's got right now. And before you ask," he shifted his gaze to Yee, "I already have no sense of control."

Yee folded her arms across the top of the television set, looking at him over it. "What do you think is going to happen to you?"

Show them, he thought, how little control they have over him. How very little leverage. "I," he said, "Am going to die here." He felt his capacitor catch for a moment, hearing the words aloud. As if saying it made it more real. Closer to happening. "I am under no illusions this ends any other way."

They exchanged another unreadable look. They must have, he decided, been working together for a long time to have this kind of mutual signal he couldn't penetrate. "So, why cooperate?"

"I'm cooperating?"

"You're talking."

Ah, because life, even miserable, even the pathetic excuse for an existence he'd had, was preferable to death. Even as a CC droneling, he'd felt the pull of life. Even with that little of a life to cling to, he had clung with all of his limbs, all of his servos' strength. And talking extended it. Cowardly. On your knees, aren't you, Barricade? Pleading for a few more cycles of life. Be informative enough, be amusing enough, they keep you alive. What's the exchange rate? How many more cycles of life have you bought? How many more can you afford? Will you even notice when you're bankrupt?


	23. Shifting Boundaries

23. _Shifting Boundaries_.

"Do you think he's for real?" Yee leaned against the bulkhead down the corridor from the storage room where they were keeping the robot. She'd be honest: he kind of weirded her out. Not the four eyes thing, but how human he seemed—emotions, gestures, everything. It wasn't that he was alien: it was that he wasn't alien ENOUGH.

"About what?" Sternburgh was somewhere else, mentally, right now. She knew this phase from before. Sooner or later he'd come out with something fucking brilliant. Like that famous detective guy, Sherlock Holmes—Sternburgh just went through these, well, fits where he just stared off into space. She'd learned not to take it personally. In this field, you learned not to take anything personally.

"About the whole he's going to die thing?"

"Oh that? Yeah. He's serious." Sternburgh traced his fingers idly down the bolts in the aircraft carrier's wall. "Reasonable assumption, too. Unfortunately."

"But, we don't do that! He said it himself. We have rules. Boundaries."

"Rules that don't apply to him. He's not an EPW. Not really. He's not even an Enemy Combatant. He's not even human. What rules apply to him? Geneva Convention doesn't cover alien robots."

"We wouldn't. I mean it's our job to exploit creatively the letter of the law," Yee said, tossing back one of Sternburgh's favorite catchphrases. "But we'd stop at murder."

"It's not murder. He's a robot. A toaster with a personality." Sternburgh switched to drumming his fingers on the support beam. "And you don't like him, so why you care anyway?"

"What do you mean I don't like him? He just makes me uncomfortable."

"He picked up on that. Watch yourself."

Yee shrugged the warning off. "Just don't get where all this 'toaster' stuff is coming from with you, Roe."

"It comes from the fact even I'm not omnipotent, Heather." He used the first name deliberately, almost as a parry to her use of his. "I don't want to make promises I can't keep even in my own head."

"What's up?"

"Pentagon directive: they have some HAARP spinoff tech they think can beat these things. They want a test."

"Against an EPW?" Yee's disgust was palpable. There were rules. Or, there should be. Semantics: she could play that. His pickup tag said EPW, and Geneva Con protected EPWs. She might not like him, but this was bigger than even the big ugly alien. America did not murder prisoners. Not the America she swore her allegiance to. Not the America whose flags were on her shoulders.

"I'm playing every trick I can, but just a matter of time that I can hold them off."

Yee watched his hand, clutching at the metal beam. "So, what is your plan? What can we control?"

Sternburgh sighed. "I hate to say but at this point, his best utilization is as a background asset. We know very little about the Autobots—the Diego Garcia teams are under orders not to talk with us, remember? We only got the Plank kid because he was sent away under some cloud. Everything we know about the Autobots is their own self-aggrandized propaganda. And everything we know about the Decepticons has been more or less filtered through the Autobots."

"And the politicians have had a field day twisting both," Yee said, bitterly. She'd had a rough time in DC convincing the Armed Services Committee their team needed Barricade more than JPL, NSA, NASA and a whole host of other alphabet-agencies.

"Exactly." So that's what we sell. More valuable alive than dead. She nodded.

"So that's why you're all friendly up in there? A little I show you mine, you show me yours?"

Sternburgh smiled at her. "I'm not losing my edge, Heather. I'm playing him. And I'm aware he's playing me. But in the end, you know, it's the intel that matters. Not your ego, not mine. Not his. Intel. Always."

She shook her head. "Rules," she said. "We are not savages, Roe."

"Aren't we?"

Yee sighed, scratching behind her ear where her braid was pulling her hair tight. "We do it for a reason. We do it to protect something beautiful." She thought of her son, in preschool, his beautiful almond-shaped eyes wide with delight riding his first tricycle.

She waited for him to argue with her—he was in that sort of mood. "Yeah," he said, finally, mysteriously. "Some things are worth it." He looked down the hall at the guarded doorway. Yee wondered what he saw in the alien thing. She wondered if he'd realized that it was just like him.

"Are you going to let them kill him?"

Sternburgh shrugged, badly. A thin cover. Yee resented he was trying to cover with her at all. That's not how it worked. That's not the deal they'd ever made. Persona to the world: sincere with each other. It was a partnership that had stood them for ten years, in some ways deeper than her own marriage. In every way the most honest relationship Sternburgh had. "Not my call." He went on the attack. "Them? Him?" Throwing back at her that she'd turned their side into a 'them', not an 'us'.

She didn't rise, deliberately. Try to game her? No. She'd been at this too long. As had he. "So, your cultural insights," she prompted, tearing the conversation into cooler territory. She refused to get angry.

"Warrior culture, highly individualized. This isn't like the Taliban—where tribal identity is important. More like us, but with a bit more aggressive hierarchy, almost no stability." He cricked his neck, rolling his shoulder, releasing tension. Or trying to. He headed toward the stairs. Trying to leave her behind? Or turn away from his own speculation? Impossible to tell.

"He really as ready to die as he thinks?" She followed him, watching as he climbed the stairs. Carefully, trying to hide the fact of his artificial leg.

Sternburgh turned, leg dangling in the air between them like some kind of symbol. "Are any of us?"


	24. Halting Confidence

A/N If you're reading this and I've posted it on Friday (which is The Plan), Hi from Botcon! If you've never been and you live in the US, you should come some time! It's so much fun: everyone's super friendly—you can go up and start talking to people. About robots! *squee*

24. _Halting Confidence_

Nemesis

Losing his objective edge, Starscream seethed. How dare Blackout? He had no right. He had no…authority to have an opinion! Starscream felt his hands ball into prickly fists as he strode down the corridor to the passive sat surveillance monitor room. A room that was, for an extra pang, right next to Barricade's work cube. Blackout had been right—well, any mech who could process complex functions would have gotten this one right—that with a directional reading and range they could at least narrow down where Barricade might be.

This wasn't over. Not the Barricade part of it. Nor the Blackout part. He would do this without the damn copter's help. He would find a way.

/Starscream./ Skywarp's voice on his comm ping.

/Acknowledged./

/Where are you? We need to talk./

/We are talking right now./

A pause. /Please don't be difficult./

Starscream's turn to pause /I am in Passive Sat./

/Right./ Skywarp cut the comm. He must have been close—Starscream had barely called up the Indian Ocean satellite maps from the last several solars when the door coded open. Starscream hesitated, debating whether to pull something quickly to cover the maps. But no. Skywarp was his Trine mate. He had promised to help. Starscream, he admonished himself, you must trust someone. And if you cannot trust Skywarp….

"What is it you wish to discuss?"

Skywarp shifted uncomfortably on his feet. His own debate, Starscream realized. Skywarp was hiding from him, as well. He felt his confidence wobble. "How much do you know of my mission?"

"Nothing. Megatron sent for you. I presume to replace me, but that is mere presumption." His mouth twisted bitterly at the end. He had suffered—so much—for his presumption in the past.

"I'm not here to replace you," Skywarp said. But his optics were still troubled, the supraorbital ridge drawn over them. "But you are the target." They both exhaled, sharply, simultaneously. Always a bonded unit, the synchronicity struck at the oddest times.

"You did not have to tell me that," Starscream said, quietly.

"I know. I cannot tell you everything. But I will tell you as much as I can." As much as he could—might have been just that much.

"Do not endanger your precious loyalty," Starscream said, feeling the sting of the rebuff. He tried to sound acid, but it came out, honestly, rather envious.

"I compromise my effectiveness in being your advocate if I lose that reputation," Skywarp murmured.

"Are you my advocate? Honestly?" The sarcasm came easier this time. Starscream folded his arms over his chassis.

"You are my Trine mate. I can protect you…somewhat. But…if you have done something, Starscream, now is the time to tell me."

"So you could report it back to Megatron. Confirming your reputation for loyalty, while I find myself gulled and set for termination. Honestly, Skywarp, I never thought you would pay so high a price for your precious reputation. But then again, I am not worth very much, am I?"

Skywarp reeled. Stunned. Where was this coming from?

Starscream pushed onward, the words hard as stones in his vocalizer. "Doubtless you have already told him about our flight earlier this dutycycle?"

"No…. No." he repeated, more forcefully. "I have told him nothing. My loyalty is to our mission. Not to Megatron."

"He sees them as the same."

"He is incorrect." Skywarp sighed, frustrated. "What have you done that he summoned me here?"

"I have followed my orders to the best of my abilities. I…requested transfer."

"Transfer?"

"I am," Starscream hesitated, his optics flickering down to the map displays, "not an asset to this combat team. There have been interpersonal conflicts, and…challenges to my authority that have hindered our effectiveness. Since they all seem to center on me, the only logical decision would be to remove the obstacle." There. It sounded completely reasonable. It didn't begin to touch on his dread of Megatron's rages, his boiling never-ending well of his own inadequacies. But it sounded…not pathetic.

The door behind them coded open. They both froze, Skywarp's gaze over Starscream's shoulder at the newcomer. "Blackout, yes?"

"Yeah. See I'm not the only one to have this idea," the copter said, pointedly. It had been his idea, really. Starscream splayed his hand, as if he could cover the maps he'd called out and thus, somehow, look less foolish.

Skywarp stepped closer, breaking the angry gaze of Starscream and Blackout. "Blackout, may I ask you something? In confidence of course."

"Not sure why I should confide in you."

"Because you are not the target of Skywarp's investigation," Starscream said, acidly, gratified when both of the others winced.

"Starscream," Skywarp began, imploringly.

"Never mind. Ask him your question."

A tense moment as they stared at each other. Skywarp straightened up, slowly, turning to the copter. "In all confidence, and this will not appear in any report, but you knew Megatron from before his…incapacitation, yes?"

"Yeeee-eesss," Blackout looked unsure of himself. He already didn't like where this was going.

"How would you compare him now to before? Is he the same?"

"Of course he is!" Blackout blurted. "Megatron is our leader."

"Doth protest too much," Starscream sang, snidely. "Listen, Skywarp. I will tell you. And you will leave Blackout out of your 'investigation,' and the upcoming fallout. Which will no doubt be swift and painful."

Blackout looked stunned. He didn't expect Starscream to stick up for him at all. Much less yank him out of this kind of trouble. Then again, he probably had his own motives. There was something going on between these two that all Blackout knew was that he didn't know enough to read it.

Starscream began, his voice strange, almost like a prepared speech. "Back then, I knew what I was doing. I knew what I was fighting for. I believed what I was fighting for. Now…? Do you even know what Megatron has planned? No one does. He tells us nothing. Expects us to fight for him, based on his charisma and cryogenized trust. The mech he once was—he is not that any more. I am not the only one to see it. I cannot be the only one to see it. At first I thought it was my ego and nothing but, bruised by his return, pushed down the chain, shoved into smaller quarters, smaller jobs. Shut out of what I knew I could do like I was no longer good enough. More, that I had no ability to even help him catch up. I was just obsolete and unworthy. I thought that I had simply been insulted. That was not so different from Megatron from before."

But the secretiveness. The mood swings. Listen, Blackout. He assaulted me for my tone of voice. No one could have done what he did—unified our forces, led the Decepticons for millenia—for assaulting someone for their tone of voice."

Blackout countered, uneasily, "He's always been demanding."

"Demanding, yes. Harsh, yes. Unforgiving of mistakes, yes. But those were designed, in a way, to bring out our best, not to tolerate half-efforts. Punish disloyalty." Starscream sighed, almost deflating. As if aware he'd'blown it. "Maybe the difference is too small. Maybe I am just imagining it."

"No." Skywarp murmured. "But you had best tread lightly in this, Starscream. He is out for you. He suspects you of…things he's not even sure of. Paranoid."

"We're all paranoid," Blackout muttered. Everything Starscream had just said rang disturbingly true. He was abashed he hadn't seen it before himself.

"Yes, and to an extent that's a survival skill," Skywarp mused. "Trust equals death. We all know that. Depend on no one. These are bywords in our forces. Even the gestalts are affected by them."

"Well?" Starscream tried to square his shoulders. "What do we do?"

"First, stop deferring to me. You are the second in command here, Starscream. That means something. It means something. You tell us: what do we do? What do you want to do?"

Starscream trembled. He knew what Skywarp was asking—to lead a full scale revolt against Megatron. He can't. He doesn't trust himself, and he doesn't trust that this isn't a trick or set up by Skywarp. By his own brother. Oh he is SICK of thinking like this. Of worrying. But. First, we get Barricade back.

Worry about the rest after. For all you know, there may not be an 'after', so why waste the worry?


	25. Refused Contrition

A/N: In my like, actual life, I've had to do a lot of reading/research/thinking about apology and forgiveness. If you want to get in on some of it, read Simon Wiesnthal's The Sunflower. I think a lot of that, with the whole medieval notion of remorse, kinda spawned this chapter.

25. _Refused Contrition_

Diego Garcia

Chromia laid a hand on Flareup's arm. "Let us help you," she said, her voice pitched soothingly low.

Flareup said nothing. Help her? They didn't want to help her. Not with what she wanted. She'd done it. She wanted to confess. To tell the truth. To have them hear the truth. To have them acknowledge. She had done wrong. That's what you do when you do something wrong, isn't it? Confess, be heard, make some atonement or repentance, and then be accepted back into the circle of the decent.

They were trying—in the nicest possible way—to deny her that. Cheap grace, by sidestepping the assignment of guilt.

She'd felt that moment of awful, pure cleanness when she'd confessed before, but they had stained it with their theories. That their Flareup could never have done that. So…she didn't fit their preconceived Flareup model, so, she was wrong. SHE was wrong: not their precious imaginary version of her. She felt her mouth twist bitterly, aware that Chromia and Arcee were waiting for an answer. Waiting patiently, of course, their azure optics spiraled wide with sympathy she neither wanted nor deserved.

"You can't help me," she said, quietly, hoping it didn't sound too awful.

"We can," Arcee insisted. "Let us in. Tell us what happened." Funny how a while ago, when she'd first been returned from the Nemesis, Flareup would have welcomed those words. Now, they were not enough. No longer enough. In fact, now they were threatening. They wanted to get inside, but not to understand. Not to know. They wanted to find some way to shove their pet theories into her brain.

"I told you. I attacked Prowl. Then I told Starscream where the humans had taken him." Simple, easy language. How could anyone misunderstand? Watch.

"That makes no sense," Chromia said. "I just came from the repair hangar—Ratchet insists that the injuries weren't done by an energon blade."

"Starscream. He did it before he left. So I wouldn't be blamed for it."

Arcee was firm, but patient: she took Flareup's chin in her hand, turning her face. "You must know how improbable that sounds."

"I know what happened," Flareup said. "It's true." He had said it made them no longer even—meaning that she owed him, because he would take the blame for the injury she had caused. He had been trying to protect her. A 'con. Trying to save her from her own worst impulses.

Frag: at least he had acknowledged she'd had worst impulses. She glared at Arcee.

"Look," Chromia said, stepping between the other sisters. "We know your feelings towards Barricade are…confused."

"They're not confused," Flareup said, reflexively. She cut herself short. No, her feelings for him really were a mess. He didn't deserve to be handed over to the humans—no mech did. And he had done awful things—awful things to her, even—but they were in the name of some larger mission. She didn't agree with it. She didn't believe it. But didn't her side do pretty much the same? Could someone like Sideswipe really feel that his conscience was any cleaner? Even Optimus: she'd watched him grow ever more brutal in battle. He professed to hating it. If asked, he'd probably insist that he did it only to get the battle over with faster, to hasten the dawn of final peace. Nice rationalization.

It was flimsy, thin and fake. Just like the ghost-Flareup her sisters were trying to glue on her right now. It didn't change the fact that his hands were dirty, his spark dirty.

Who were they to judge the Decepticons, about that at least?

Part of Flareup hated these new thoughts, these disturbing thoughts. It would be easy—seductively so—to blame them on a shell program, or Barricade planting some pernicious seeds of malignant thought in her cortex. But that would avoid the truth—these were her questions. And if the Autobot cause was so undeserving of these questions, these doubts, these unpleasant thoughts, it would be able to refute them, no? A belief worth having can survive any doubt.

So far it hadn't. She was aware they were staring at her, impatient, but holding back (they thought) from showing it. "I'm sorry," she said, finally. "That was unfair. It's merely a complicated situation."

"No," Arcee refuted. "That's the easy one. He arranged to torture you. As bad—if not worse—than if he'd done it himself."

"Arcee," Chromia shook her head. Arcee's approach was always harder than her blue sister's. "Flareup, I'm sorry about mentioning that. We really just want to help. You're not the bad one here. You're not like that. You're the victim."

"I am NOT the victim!" Flareup shouted, aware that her raised voice didn't make her sound rational and calm. "I am not an object of pity! What will it take to get you to understand that?"

Whatever reply her sisters could come up with—and it looked like Arcee was rising to a scream—it was interrupted by an even louder ruckus outside. All three turned on their tires, hearing Ironhide's gravelly voice, nearly crystalline with rage.

"Is that your priority now, Optimus? Working with the slaggin' humans? When one of our own is attacked?"

A muffled reply, but even so, they could recognize Prime's soothing voice.

"Yeah! That's all the good your human allies have done us, isn't it? Starscream, right here. On our base! And where were the humans to help? Where were YOU?" The pitch was getting louder—they were approaching the hangar. Optimus entered mid-sentence of his reply.

"—have to work to discover the lapse," he said. "Ratchet has informed me that I may speak to Prowl, but first I would like to speak with Flareup." He crossed over to the cluster of the cycles. Flareup straightened up, gathering as much dignity around her as she could.

"Optimus," she said, evenly. He was the leader. He was open-minded. He would listen. He had seen Ironhide's problem, and been fair and forgiving. He would see hers. Her confidence renewed itself.

"Tell me," he said, his voice gentle, his optics a soothing ocean blue, "What you remember." Something in the way he said 'remember' unnerved her, but, this was her chance. The truth shall set you free. She would not be worthy of her Autobot insignia if she lacked the courage to make right her transgression. She wasn't sure, even now, though, if she would call it a 'mistake.'

"Starscream was in Hangar F3. He was looking for Barricade. Prowl had him cornered, but our comm was being jammed," she ignored a flare of outrage in Ironhide's eyes—another black mark against the humans as allies in arms. "We were trying to stall him—well, Prowl was trying to stall him until the others came out of Hangar Delta and saw something was wrong." Optimus nodded, soothingly. She cycled her vents. Courage was not demonstrated merely on the battlefield.

"I told him," she said, simply. "As much as I knew. Which admittedly isn't much. But first," she clenched her hands, goading herself to finish, make a clean incision. This was the real transgression, she thought, "I incapacitated Prowl. So he wouldn't hear what I was doing." She felt her frame tremble with emotion. It took all her force to keep her optics online and steady.

Optimus said nothing for a long moment. She scanned his face for any sign of disappointment or outrage. She deserved it. Still, she couldn't help but feel relief as his face stayed its usual neutral mask. "Flareup," he said, gently, "why did you tell Starscream of Barricade's location?"

"Because…because the humans—you know what they'll do to him." Something flickered in Optimus's optics at that notion. "No one deserves to be treated like that. Not even," she braced herself, "not even Megatron!" There, she'd said it. If there were rules, they had to apply to the enemy.

Ironhide and one of her sisters sucked in a vent of pure horror at what must have seemed to them to be darkest blasphemy. But Optimus cut them off. "True. Of our many missteps in our approach to the humans, we tolerated Megatron's captivity. We should have protested back at the Dam." Even when Megatron had been 'neutralized' under the ice, he should have protested. "You do not mind that Starscream might injure the humans in a retrieval attempt?"

She met his eyes, coolly. "I do not. If they are attempting to injure him, they deserve even Starscream's wrath." If we tolerate it against the Decepticons, the humans can so easily turn it one day on us. She saw Ironhide nod, thoughtfully. As if she'd scored a point. As if she had to earn her way to anything. Behind her, one of her sisters mumbled something.

"Our mission is to protect the humans," Optimus said, sadly.

"Indiscriminately? Even criminal humans? Even humans who act like Decepticons?"

Optimus looked stunned. Flareup felt more than a little startled herself: she'd intended to confess and take her punishment for injuring Prowl. She was ready to bow her head to that. But for this? "I am not," she said, slowly, "anti-human. And I believe in our responsibility to protect the weak. But that, to me, it cuts across species. It is no less right to allow the humans to victimize a mech than for a mech to torment humans."

She looked around, expecting a circle of hostile eyes. Chromia looked worried, Prime thoughtful. Ironhide's expression was too changeable to place.

"But it's not even about the humans," she blurted into the silence. "This is about Prowl. I betrayed him. I injured him. I am ready for whatever punishment you decide I deserve." She felt her capacitor flutter. If they could see even half of her point about the humans, they would finally, finally admit that she had openly, knowingly, attacked Prowl.

"Flareup," Optimus said, softly. "Prowl will recover fully, within a few cycles, Ratchet says. And Prowl contends you did not attack him."

She felt herself chill, as if an icy wind blew across her chassis. His word over hers. He'd had a head injury, and they still believed him over her. She stared at Optimus, open-mouthed, for a long moment. She shook her head. Anything like a coherent thought simply refused to collect itself in her cortex. What do you do when you try to do the right thing and no one accepts it?

She started shaking. All over. Some kind of mix she couldn't even clearly label as either rage or fear or just some cold empty emotion she didn't even have a name for.

Ironhide took her gently by the trembling arm. "Come on, Flareup." His eyes said something to her, like he understood. Maybe not her point, maybe not what she was saying, but that he had been here, in this inchoate rattling stage of self-doubt before. "Ratchet actually sent me over here to get you: do you think you can talk to Cliffjumper?"

Flareup's optics went from her sisters, to Optimus, to Ironhide. Their face ranged from worried to blandly noble to…pity. She laid a hand over Ironhide's on her arm. Pity, she picked, aware of the bitter irony. At least Ironhide acknowledged something in her the others were staunchly refusing to see.


	26. The Clock Ticks More Loudly

26. _The Clock Ticks More Loudly_

USS Dreadnought

Barricade prided himself on not being entirely stupid. A long lifetime of constant paranoia had primed his senses for any sign of danger or trouble. Case in point, the Max human's very uncharacteristic frown. He had only dealt with the human for what his chrono told him was three solar cycles (local). He'd had Max baselined in much less than that.

Direct would work best with him, Barricade decided. Max was too concrete to respond to any subtlety, which also made him blindered to any motive beyond the obvious. But right now, it was the obvious that Barricade wanted to know, anyway. Max had his head and hands buried in one of Barricade's forearm panels, trying to repair some of the sensor damage from the cuffs.

"They're going to offline me soon, aren't they?" He fought a nauseated swirl in his tanks at hearing the words, but his voice sounded steady, calm.

Max sat back, his face going through a dozen expressions, before settling on a frown. "I wouldn't know anything about that," he said, neutrally. A little too neutrally. As in 'rehearsed'.

A little pride up. "Come on. They wouldn't let YOU know? That's just not believable." He saw the compliment strike home, outrage gushing out from the wound. This was bad. He kept his vocalizer under control. Death in combat was one thing. That was inevitable. Death in ignominy….

Max's mouth pinched together, the lips going white. Rage. What made Max angry? Push hard or let up? Push. "I guess they're not talking about repairing me, huh?"

Max threw down the wrench he had been holding. "Fucking DoD!"

Barricade knew better than to intrude. He said nothing. He didn't even move. Max heard his words echo through the tiny room, his face coloring at his language. "Sorry," he muttered. "Just that…like they can't find anything better to test it on."

Test? Oh, this did NOT sound good. "What's it?"

Max looked up at him, his eyes almost Autobot blue. It was…disconcerting. "It. HAARP. It's this high amplitude stuff. There's a lot of nonsense about it—that the US government could cause an earthquake with it, or control the weather—someone argued that Hurricane Katrina was caused by it, that the Bush administration wiped out New Orleans because he hated black people—even control people's minds and stuff. Ridiculous, really." He bent down and picked up his wrench, and bent back over Barricade's forearm. "But the basic technology makes sense. High amplitude waves—combinations of them could cause, you know, catastrophic resonance. They'd need tuners and such."

"That's the test." Oh, this did not sound fun.

"Yeah."

Oh frag oh frag oh frag oh frag. Barricade felt his processor overclock with the sheer badness of this situation. He cycled in a vent, feeling his core temp spike in fear. There was, he told himself, no place for fear. You knew they were going to kill you. You knew it was inevitable. This is not news. This is not a surprise. Now that you know how, maybe you can brace yourself. Maybe you can die on your feet.

Alone, but on his feet.

Fraggin' ridiculous. Make some big statement with his death, prove…what?…something by not giving in to pain and fear and terror and helplessness and the despair that had been stalking him his entire life. Big grand dramatic statement, to be read…by whom? Seen…by whom? Nobody cared. NOBODY FRAGGIN' CARED.

That, he realized, was what bothered him. More than the prospect of his own death. Just the sheer…pathetic wretchedness of it all. Dying unmourned. Unmissed.

He swore aloud. It slipped out. "Hurt you?" Max asked, concerned. Idiot Max. Here Barricade had—how little time left to live-and not only was Max still trying to repair him, he was worried that he'd hurt him.

"No," Barricade said, quietly.

"Probably shouldn't have told you." Max dusted himself off, crossing over to his cart. He paused from looking in a drawer. "Guess I thought you had, you know, some right to know."

Barricade smiled, lopsided, weak. "Not like I'm going to tell anyone."

"I know. I'm just…really sorry."

Frag it. He was getting sympathy. From the fraggin' enemy. Made worse by the fact that Max's stupid idiotic soft-headed human sentiment hit him like a blow, square in the chassis.

"Any idea when?"

"No." Max bent over his tool drawer, blatantly trying to distract himself. "We're all still trying to fight it. Me, the other engineers, that scary Army guy…. You should have seen the royal fit Yee threw when she found out. My mom always told me blondes were scary, but damn."

Yee? Fraggin' Yee. Standing up for him. Must be one of those 'mechs you love to hate' kind of things. Great, he'd die of terminal irony. He'd sunk pretty fraggin' low that this actually touched him. Maybe you should be offlined, he told himself. Getting soft, and sick, and weak. Mercy killing.

Sternburgh picked up on the change immediately. Which impressed Barricade, more than he wanted to admit. No point in being impressed, really. Barricade knew he'd done a reasonable job feigning his usual surliness, but even so, Sternburgh had stopped, squinted at him, and said, "Who told you?"

Possibly a stupid use of his last cycles online to play games, but some habits were too ingrained. "Told me what?" he asked, innocently.

Sternburgh, of course, saw right through that. "Told you about the HAARP test."

Barricade could have strung along longer, but it didn't really seem worth it. Wasn't that fun. "Not his fault, that he told me."

"Max, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Kind of funny, don't you think? That Autobot of yours goes off on this rage about being touched by our engineers, and you—the engineer's the only one you'd bother to protect."

"We're used to repair bots. Max at least is sentient. Almost a step up."

Sternburgh laughed. "He'll be flattered that you like him."

"I don't 'like' him. I merely tolerate him. He is…considerably less annoying than most other humans I have met." Case in point.

"Riiight," Sternburgh goaded. Barricade wasn't going to fall for that.

"So, what are we doing today? More tapes?" He hated to admit it, but watching those interrogations was kind of fun. For those few short cycles, he almost forgot he was a prisoner. Almost forgot he was friendless. Under a death sentence. He could talk to Sternburgh, and Yee, on the same level. It was something he'd…never had.

He hated that he enjoyed it.


	27. Mission Briefing

27. _Mission Briefing_

**Nemesis**

Vortex shuffled a little awkwardly into the Ready Room. He had no idea why he was invited here. He had no place in anything like this. He was too old, too broken. Too useless. Sure, good enough to haul up chunks of energon from Tunguska. Good enough for mass battles where numbers counted. But…he wasn't a small-team guy. Not anymore. Not since…Swindle.

Starscream nodded coolly at him: all the welcome he'd get. Not that he expected any more. Vortex looked around the room: Blackout stood by the sat-map display, zooming in and out with the speed of someone looking for something and not finding it. Starscream stood by the briefing display panel. Skywarp sat on one of the chairs, lost in thought, arms folded over his broad chest. This was the team. Okay. All aerial. He could do this.

Vortex dropped into a seat next to Skywarp, flaring his shoulder mounts to keep his rotors out of the way. Starscream looked over at Blackout, just as the copter said, "Got it!"

A map lit up on the display panel behind the Air Commander. Murky blue-grey, overlaid with white contours of water depth. Flying over water. Great. Vortex hated aqueous missions: the jets could manage to get lift even if underwater. A bit more difficult for the rotor-lift types. Still, you didn't crybaby out of the first special-teams mission you'd been invited on in megacycles.

"In here," Starscream gestured, "is our mission objective. We are looking for a large ship, presumably American in designation," (the display popped up an American flag for reference), "which is where Barricade will be held. There are currently several ships fitting this description here—an entire fleet and a few ships in transit. We presume the ship will be military." The display cycled through a series of American ship types. "It is also safe to assume that up close, we would be able to detect some attempt at signal shielding. I broadcast my entire time in captivity, but was unheard. Barricade is presumably doing the same. So, one narrowing factor on our target will be some sort of signal dampening equipment such as they use on Diego Garcia itself."

Starscream keyed the display again, and it made a visual display of the frequency of the signal dampeners used on the NEST base.

"First objective, locate and paint correct target." Starscream looked at Vortex and Blackout in turn. "You are best suited for slow recon flying missions. This should be relatively low risk, as you bear American designs. Should they deviate from their usual scheme of challenging first, you are not to engage. Pull back and let Skywarp and myself handle it."

Vortex felt like he should protest; that he was somehow being insulted, presumed not to be combat-worthy. Something must have shown on his face, because the jet added, "A rotary is indispensible for retrieving Barricade. We do not know what shape he may be in, and having a cargo hold for his…frame," Starscream's voice went tight for a klik, "may be essential."

The jet continued, "Once we—you—have identified the correct target, the second objective is, of course, retrieval. Again, the rotaries have an important part to play. You two will provide covering fire as Skywarp and myself assault the ship. Vortex, as you are larger, you should carry the jamming equipment for this mission. This is a surgical-strike, and if we can complete and get away without any…interference, that is to our advantage."

"Uhhhh," Blackout said, hesitantly. "One question: what if he's deep in there? We're all too big to get him out."

Starscream narrowed his eyes. "You ask that like you have a solution."

"Dead End," Blackout said, unhappily. "He can do it."

"Ridiculous," Starscream spat.

"He'd be at highest risk," Skywarp said, optics darting between the two, trying to figure the backstory to this out. "But the likelihood is they are keeping Barricade somewhere inside the ship."

"He wants to do it," Blackout said. "And we need him. Gonna let your stupid pride stand in the way again, Starscream?" The challenge in his voice was unmistakable.

The jet hissed, the ailerons on his shoulders fluttering in agitation, but after a moment he subsided. "Very well," he said, finally. "Comm him here."

Vortex decided he'd go for a neutral, standard question, to defuse the tension, "What other support can we count on, if things get hairy?"

Wrong question, apparently. Starscream stiffened, optics keenly searching Vortex's face for some trace of insult. "Unfortunately, we are it." Starscream sighed. "Megatron has no knowledge of this mission."

Well. Ask a stupid question…. The room seemed to still around him. They were waiting for him to decide. They knew that at this moment, he had power over them—he could run to Megatron and reveal the whole plan. Sedition? Treachery? It would look that way to Megatron. Was that because it was?

In or out, Vortex. Are you with them or are you too afraid of Megatron, too afraid of your own failings, to even try anymore? He pushed that aside.

You could ruin them, Vortex. With one word. With one comm signal. You could destroy them. Remember Starscream being beaten because Megatron didn't like his tone of voice? Megatron would eviscerate Starscream. And you? You could name your own reward. What would that be? What do you really want?

He could feel the tension in the room, their electrical fields vibrating with the awareness that at this moment, Vortex held their lives in his hands. In his hands. Oh no. He had done this once before. He had crushed what lay in his hands, then. And now?

He looked at Blackout. As the other copter, if he bailed, it would all be on Blackout: the recon, the cargo load, everything. That, finally, was what decided him. What he really wanted? To be part of a team again. It wasn't the same, it couldn't be the same. But that was more important—had always been more important—than some individual ambition.

But it was about him. It wasn't about Barricade to him, it wasn't about some noble rescue attempt. It was about the team. It was about the very trust they were extended toward him. "I'm in." He forced his voice steady.


	28. There are No Easy Answers

A/N Autobots! Six chapters left after this one and things, uh…really get intense.

28. _There Are No Easy Answers_

**Diego Garcia**

Flareup settled herself next to Cliffjumper. He'd pushed himself to seated on the repair frame. As she spoke, she saw him still, subconsciously, working his new mandible mounting, as if it still required some fine machining.

He looked…unfinished. The new plates were in need of their final machining before plating, so while half of his face was its usual red, the other was the bare silver color of naked metal. It was unsettling to look at, she admitted. "How are you feeling?" she asked, gently. She'd spent megacycles back on Cybertron doing relief and evacuation work—the soothing tone came automatically.

"A little numb, honestly," Cliffjumper said. He tried out a smile, which widened slowly as he felt no pain. "Don't even remember what happened."

"At Tunguska? I think Blackout hit you. One of your grenades."

Cliffjumper rubbed his face, ruefully. "Always knew those things were dangerous. How'd I get off the battlefield?"

"Sideswipe. He got you away and under cover."

Cliffjumper muttered something.

"I'm sorry?"

Cliffjumper looked toward the door of the repair bay. "Thought I could count on him to do the right thing in combat, that's all."

"He did the right thing," Flareup said. "He saved your life!"

"We had other priorities at the time."

Flareup sat back, frustrated. Did Cliffjumper realize what he was even saying? That Sideswipe should have left him to die? For some stupid mission objective? What even was the mission objective? The Decepticons were loading to leave. Flareup big on her lip. Remember, Flare, she told herself, this isn't about you. This isn't about your morality or your beliefs. He's the patient. Give him what he needs. "Well, you may disagree," she managed, "But I'm glad he saved you. I would have missed you like crazy." She managed a smile.

He smiled back, a little more confidently this time. "Thanks, Flare. I'd've missed me too." He swung his legs off the repair frame. To her alarmed look, he laughed. "Not gonna go make a break or anything. Just…the servos get a little stiff, you know? And tired of looking like a patient."

She subsided. "Sure. And I do worry a bit too much, don't I?" She grinned. "But you know you thought about making a break for it."

"Sure did." He looked around the repair bay. "Smells like damage in here. Not healthy, if you ask me. And too fraggin' quiet."

"It's empty now," she pointed out. Prowl had been moved to Alpha, apparently, simply because he refused to be sidelined. That's what Ironhide had told her on the way over here. She still felt…odd about Ironhide. He was wrong, he was so wrong. But about the humans…she was starting to see his point. At least in part. Not all of the humans were good. Some didn't deserve protection or honor. And…she didn't like feeling like that. Back on Cybertron she'd never judged the evacuees by faction or politics or anything. They were just…victims. What made these humans so different? Why couldn't she look at them the same way?

"Yeah, and I don't like quiet OR empty." He looked at her slightly sideways. "Weird, isn't it, that I have trouble remembering?"

"Not really, in the circumstances," she said. "It was pretty chaotic to begin with."

His shoulders seemed to relax. "Yeah, I guess. And I guess you know about that, too, right? I mean, well," he dropped his optics from her face, "on the Nemesis and all. Okay if you don't want to talk about it, though."

She considered. Well, she'd try. No one could blame her for not trying. "It wasn't chaotic at all. Except that one part, which I don't remember that well. But before and after…."

"You remember everything?"

"I do. Even how much it hurt, so I know it's real You know, you don't make up pain."

Cliffjumper rubbed his jaw. "Yeah. Can I ask you something? About how it went?"

"Sure." She waited. Now they ask, she was thinking. Now they slaggin' ask me what happened. NOW, when it's too late. Cliffjumper seemed at a loss. "Well," she said, finally, "I was kept in a repair bay. One of theirs. Looks totally different from ours. Not any sort of cell or anything. I wasn't restrained at all. I probably was locked in the repair bay, but it didn't exactly feel evil or anything. And they did all my repairs."

"Probably scanned your systems, too," Cliffjumper said, pointedly. Great, Flareup sighed. Another mech out to tell her what she already knew.

"Probably," she said. Was that supposed to be some kind of dig? If so, she wasn't falling for it. "And Ironhide's while we're at it." She forced herself to relax, as Cliffjumper's hands twitched apologetically. "Anyway, that's pretty much it until I was brought to the hangar. Starscream held me and the little red one did most of the damage."

"Where was Barricade?" His voice was measured. Like he was asking this for a reason.

"Up with Ironhide, I guess."

"So...," Cliffjumper frowned. "Don't mean to repeat gossip or anything, but, rumor has it you hurt Prowl so you could help Starscream rescue Barricade. Seems kinda farfetched, don't you think?"

"No." She got what this was all about. He didn't want to talk. Not for himself. He wanted to join the 'let's straighten up Flareup' parade. "I don't know if you have realized this yet, Cliffjumper, but holding the Decepticons up as some kind of example of brutality doesn't quite work anymore. Did you ever see yourself in combat? Sideswipe? Optimus? All of you are pretty brutal. I saw you and Sideswipe mowing down drones like it was a sparkling's game. So don't you dare think you can judge them." She found herself rolling agitatedly on her tire. "There's bad in us too. And just like there's bad in us, there's good in them. Even though they're the enemy. And if there is ever a way to stop this war, end it, that doesn't mean the annihilation of both fraggin' sides," she heard her voice start to shrill with emotion but didn't even care anymore, "it's through helping what's good."

"We have to punish what's bad, though. We can't let them get away with it."

"And when that 'punishment' makes us indistinguishable from them? Those humans at Tunguska couldn't seem to tell us apart, and I think I know why." She was fuming now, both at him and at her failure to keep her own cool. She couldn't do this. She thought she could change specialties. To do some good. She couldn't even comfort a patient without turning it into an argument.

She dropped back down to his eye level. "I was wrong to have attacked Prowl to do it. I know. I was a coward. I wanted to hide my actions because I knew you'd all disapprove. None of you would see my side anyway. None of you even question any more why we're doing what we're doing, much less what the frag it is we even think we're doing anymore." She found herself upright again. Clutched her hands into fists. Cliffjumper didn't deserve this. She was just…unleashing on him. It wasn't fair.

"Sorry," she said, tightly. "I just…have questions. And none of the answers seem to fit." Optical lens lubricant spilled over her cheeks.

"Hey," Cliffjumper said, softly. He pushed to his feet—a little unsteady still from the sensor block—and put his arms around her. "It's okay. We get it. I get it." He patted her shoulder. He didn't get it. He just wanted her to stop gushing all over him. Probably thought she was unstable. Well, Flareup, you're certainly acting pretty unstable, aren't you? "We're not like them, and deep down, you know that."

His condescension finally snapped something in her. She pushed away, not even caring how crazy she looked or sounded or how ugly. "You aren't like them. At least Starscream came looking. At least he cared. He could have been killed doing it. What did any of you do like that for Ironhide or me?"

Cliffjumper gaped at her, his new jaw grating with the action. He shook his head, in denial or disbelief.

Another failure, Flareup. What now?


	29. Deathwatch

A/N posting a day early (sorry!) because I'm going to have a fun-fun medical adventure tomorrow. And I stupidly don't want to let people down (all like…three of you!) by not posting.

29. _Deathwatch_

**USS Dreadnought**.

Just another soldier fallen for the cause, Barricade thought. Guess it's always this way. Guess the soldier falling is the only one who feels this…dreadful isolation. This terrible friendlessness. I've never felt it before. I've cut ties as soon as they dropped off registry. Safer that way. Saner that way. You tear yourself up like this. Can't function. Only when it's you does it _matter_, only when it's you is it un-fraggin'-avoidable, and of course, then it's too fucking late isn't it? You want to yell, no, not me! _I'm_ somehow worthy of escaping this. No one else, just me. I'm special. Well, let's check off the obvious: Too much to live for? Nope. Too many will miss me? Nope. I haven't completed my life's work? I don't even have a 'life's work' unless you count a mountain of mission logs I have yet to enter. Yeah, you're so fucking special. Can't blame the others for cutting ties.

Not that I think they're rejoicing in my death or anything. Even that's a kind of narcissism—that they'd care enough to enjoy my absence. Even notice my absence. Can't blame them for just letting another placeholder slip into line. When I've done it myself…how many times? When I've seen them do it. No harm no foul. Not that it would hurt them anyway even if I raged for cycles about it. Waste what little time I have left in impotent rage? Not my style.

Damn warrior philosophy about choosing how you meet death. Test time, no retakes, Barricade. Can you do it? Not on your knees. Die on your feet. He summoned a smile for Sternburgh, who had probably broken a thousand military protocols and common sense into a fine spray of splinters giving him the time of his now apparently imminent demise. He at least deserved a little effort on Barricade's part simply in recognition.

"I'm sorry," Sternburgh said.

Barricade shrugged. "Nothing you could do about it, really."

"I did everything I could think of." Sternburgh's face flushed. He was angry about something even larger than this, though…this seemed plenty large enough for Barricade. "And trust me, I've been around long enough to think of a lot."

"Not blaming you, human." Knew I was dead as soon as Ironhide hit me back at Tunguska.

"I know. Just bitching about my own powerlessness. Not my favorite feeling."

"Know that feeling." Barricade tried to stir himself. A torpor was beginning to seep into him, like water rising from the ground. Just sink down into it, it invited, become numb. Be dead already before they can kill you. Cheat them of that much. It is all the control you have, to take you out of your own death. So tempting. But no. Stay awake. Stay aware. Face it. See it coming. Stand before it. For once in your life, stand up to it. Don't try to wriggle away, take the easy way out, avert your eyes. This is your death. You only get one. See what you've inflicted on so many other mechs. See how you like it. See.

"We have a bit too much in common," Sternburgh said. He'd dropped off the chair and had settled himself on the floor, leaning against Barricade's lower leg. Barricade had originally thought Sternburgh did it as the classic 'violate personal space' thing. Now he didn't know what to think.

"I was just thinking that the other day staring at your alt mode. Wait a minute, you don't have one." We don't have anything in common. This approach won't work on me. Resist, Barricade. Resist EVERYTHING. Till the very end. It is all you can do.

"You're not scared?"

Trap question. Oh yes I'm scared. Terrified. Who wouldn't be? Who wouldn't be?—someone who can't be leveraged. Which are you? Deflect. "Would you be? What's the proper human response for this sort of situation?"

"Stark terror. Know soldiers who have pissed themselves when the gun comes out. You're doing much better."

"Haven't seen the weapon yet, have I?" Resist.

Sternburgh sighed. "No one has."

"Sounds like you're trying to win me over to terror." Don't succumb.

"It would be logical. I'd imagine you robot types would be all about logic."

Phuh. What he didn't know. "If we were so logical, would we fight a war nearly to our own extinction? Or better yet, would we be so inefficient about it?" Deflect.

Sternburgh nodded his head, thinking more than agreeing. "Funny, isn't it? We're buying into the whole 'machines are more efficient than we are' philosophy. That's the rhetoric on the surface at least. Honestly, I think most of it is because it's easier to sit in a building and push a button and watch a tv screen than to pull a trigger and actually see and hear and smell that round go through someone's head."

This was a little too close to Barricade. Frag it, what did he have to lose? It was philosophy, nothing more. Certainly not actionable intelligence. "Having done both, the distance makes it easier. But only in the short term. Sooner or later your cortex catches up with what you've been doing."

He hesitated. It felt like a betrayal of…something. But at the same time, it felt like an almost painful release of pressure, as though some tank somewhere had been overpressurized and had just vented.

Sternburgh studied his hands. "Not just with killing, you know?"

"Get to you, what you do?"

Sternburgh squinted at the far wall. "More gets to me what it's done to me, if that makes any sense. And what I can do."

Oh yeah, that made a little too much sense. "Started doing it as a hobby. You know. Keep in practice." Goading Starscream to screaming fits—he'd set speed records doing that.

Sternburgh laughed. "Oh yeah. Done that. I have everyone I know baselined. Baselined my kid's soccer coach just for the hell of it. You know, to see if I trusted my kid with him. Because yeah, youth league soccer calls for that level of paranoia." He ran a hand through his sandy hair. "They don't know, though. You know. Normal people. Like…I have my wife. And I love her. But I can't argue with her. I can't. I'd destroy her. I know so much about her and what works against her I could vaporize her ego in about five minutes. So I just…leave." He shifted against Barricade's leg. "I tell myself that I know I love her because I at least care enough to walk out." He looked down at his knees. "Pretty fucking stupid that I'm telling my marital problems to a goddam robot."

Barricade shrugged. "Got nothing better to do." Sternburgh gave a sad sort of smirk, using his hands to stretch his artificial leg out along the floor. Barricade felt the moment stretch a bit too long, and…all too unpleasant thoughts of his future crept back toward him, making him acutely aware how empty the silent moments were, and how fast they were slipping away. "So why do you do it?" he blurted.

"Me? Because I can, I guess. I mean, that I can, and me doing it means someone else doesn't have to." He ran his hands across what must be the join of his artificial limb. "I'm already broken."

Barricade started at the words, chilled at the echo from his own past. Desperate to trawl the conversation out of dangerous waters, he said, "Yeah, but you believe in all this 'my country is awesome' stuff, right?"

Sternburgh laughed. "Yes and no. Seen a bit too much of," he waved his hand and Baricade wasn't sure if he meant to encompass himself or the upcoming test, "this shit to really believe in our purity and virtue anymore, though. There's the pretty Army, that you see on the news: freshfaced America, straight out of high school, laying down their lives for the greater good while the average American gets pissed when McDonalds fucks up their McNuggets order. And then there's us."

"They still die, though." Barricade found himself thinking, uncomfortably, of the drones. Blank faced idiots. Couldn't help themselves. Fight and die. Pure in intention and action and belief, because single-minded.

"Oh yeah. Best I heard it put was from Yee. She thinks too much about shit like this. She says it this way, that they give their lives for the ideal of America: we give our souls for the reality." He shrugged. "Pretty fucking sad to say no matter what I love my country. Even so. Except I don't love the ideals. I love the people. Fuckin' Wal-mart at two in the morning. Reality television. The guy at the State Fair who will deep fry anything you can fit in his fryer. Kids with pants falling off their asses." His complexion reddened. He sucked in a wet sounding inhale. "Fuck it. Listen to me. Think it's me and not you, you know? So, what about you? You believe in your side?"

That was, of course, the question. "Not even sure what my side stands for anymore." When he tried to think about it, all he could think of was names, faces. Names and faces that had already purged him from their memory caches. Long lists of battles—victories, defeats, tactical ties—that all led…nowhere. No beautiful ideals here. No purity. No virtue. Then, what?

"So, why do you do it?"

Habit. It's what I was built to do. He shrugged. "Don't know," he said, finally.


	30. Agitprop

A/N Why yes, I am delaying the inevitable. :/ Agitprop's such a delicious word—propaganda designed to agitate and incite.

30. _Agitprop_

**Diego Garcia**

They stood, slackjawed, before the video spooling out across the monitor. A human's bland, flat-accented voice droned something about the President, but their optics were utterly absorbed by the footage.

"I was THERE," Sideswipe breathed. "That's not what HAPPENED!"

The image on the screen cut to show humans—dozens of them—Americans and Russians, firing determinedly at…him. Then another cut to Decepticon drones, advancing implacably across the salient, weapons blasting. A shot of Optimus backhanding Starscream, the jet staggering back. Flareup—FLAREUP—popping from behind a tree to fire on humans.

The tape was well-edited, he had to admit. He saw a clever cut of a Russian soldier firing some shoulder-mounted anti-tank-type weapon, and then the image cut to Cliffjumper's frame bowing forward, the bright mist of the glass-gas grenade erupting in slowed motion. The way it was edited, it looked like the Russian soldier was responsible for the hit.

Cliffjumper stiffened next to him. Yeah, it must be hard seeing your own near-fatality. "Is that how it happened?" he asked, quietly, not wanting to detract from the horror of what seemed to be unfolding with his own petty question.

"No," Sideswipe said, "Blackout. Lucky shot."

Cliffjumper's shoulders loosened. "All right. I can handle that." Sideswipe nodded grimly. Being hit by an enemy was…well it was how the game was played. Hit by one of the creatures you're trying to protect? Betrayal, and something more. Being taken down by something a fraction of your size, well…. Cliffjumper, Sideswipe thought, had his pride. He wasn't going to be taken down by any human. At least not just one. A whole swarm, maybe. And after one hell of a fight.

"The important thing," Ironhide finally spoke, still standing behind the others, as if still not sure of his welcome. "The important thing is what it looks like. It looks like we attacked them and they fought us off."

"Worse than that," Prowl said. "The human is saying that the battle ended when the Americans dropped a nuclear warhead on the area."

"Americans?"

"Di-Did they?" Cliffjumper asked. His fists bunched. He hated not knowing.

"No," Sideswipe said. "Uh, I don't think."

"No," Prowl said, definitively. "The Russians did. That is the information that Barricade conveyed to Flareup. It was accurate that a nuclear bomb was imminent: it is illogical that he would lie about the source."

"It's Barricade," Ironhide said. He glared at them. Sure, think this was just knee-jerk, he defied them. Say something about it.

"Nonetheless," Prowl said, nodding to acknowledge Ironhide's point, "there's no reason to presume he would lie to implicate the Russians, rather than the Americans—our former allies. If he had claimed it was the Americans with the weapon, I would grant you your point, Ironhide."

Ironhide relaxed. Someone, finally,taking him seriously. Listening to him. Ironhide found it didn't even matter that Prowl had disagreed with him. Just that…he hadn't been pushed aside, invalidated.

Prowl continued, "However, the journalist indicated that American aircraft were recorded on radar around the time of the blast."

"That was us," Sideswipe said, "Getting the slag out of there!"

"That is not how they are…arranging facts."

"Who is they? Humans?" Sideswipe compressed his lips. He was getting about sick of humans. Time was he'd really liked them. The NEST guys were awesome. Even the support pilots: great. But he'd thought Captain Kozakh was pretty nifty, and…he must have been in on this. Must have.

"Russians, it appears," Prowl reported. "But since the story is about a combined and unprovoked robot and American assault upon their natural resources, they may get other allies."

"That's why there are no Decepticons,huh?" Sideswipe leaned over: Prowl had captured the feed, and put it on a loop. He hit it again. "'Xcept for the drones."

"Drones have no faction markings," Cliffjumper pointed. "Look. Could just as easily be us as the 'cons." They watched the screen in silence, save for Ironhide's soft cursing.

"Why aren't there any shots of the 'cons? Except that one where Optimus backhands Starscream?"

"I liked that part," Sideswipe muttered. "Could watch THAT on a loop for a few orbitals."

Prowl frowned. That did make no sense. It ruined the whole story the reporter had droned about—didn't it? He pushed the thought aside, hoping his processor would work on it and feed him the answer. "Optimus needs to know about this." He stood up from the crouch he'd locked-down into to observe the human-sized monitors.

"Huh," Ironhide snorted. "Think it'll make any difference?"

Prowl whirled, "What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, come on, Prowl," Sideswipe said, "Optimus won't care. He's so soft on humans it's…disturbing."

Cliffjumper's optics darted from Prowl to Sideswipe. The last he remembered was…before Tunguska. The NEST team shutting down. We protect humans. But then he remembered enough of Tunguska itself, and the humans hadn't seemed too keen on being protected, to be honest.

"What is your problem with Optimus?" Prowl asked, levelly. "He is our leader."

"If he's our leader," Sideswipe said, "Where was he when Starscream attacked?"

"He has been trying to negotiate with the humans."

"Negotiate! Why? For what? We've wasted half of the thirty days they gave us and…nothing. No decision where to go, no preparations, even."

Prowl shifted on his feet. Yes, he knew that. He was uncomfortable with that himself. But Optimus was the leader. He had an obligation to at least grant that Prime had his reasons, however unhappy it may make Prowl at being left out of the information chain.

"I know my problem," Cliffjumper blurted. He hadn't realized until just now how it had been weighing on his mind. "Why didn't we go after Flareup and Ironhide when the 'cons took them?"

Prowl faltered. Ironhide looked surprised, more at Cliffjumper's question than Prowl's response. Prowl frowned, finally. "We do not, and you know this," he admonished, "currently have aeronautic capabilities."

"Humans do," Sideswipe interjected. "I mean, at least as far as Mars, right?"

Prowl frowned.

"Did we even ask?" Cliffjumper leaned in. "Did we? I mean, they're our allies, right? They can fly us around to fight their battles for them, but, what? If it's something WE want, they can't do it? OR DID WE NOT EVEN ASK?" Cliffjumper had the feeling he knew the answer already.


	31. What Price Glory?

A/N Keeping track of a cast of thousands is haaaaaaard. Also, this delays the inevitable. Tune in next week to read the Scene I Haven't Proofread Because It Makes Me Cry!

31. _What Price Glory?_

**Nemesis**

Megatron frowned; he'd heard about this new 'medic' thing, and frankly, was not particularly impressed. Innovation in combat led to advances, yes, but often as not the advances were dead ends. And Megatron felt that borrowing the Autobot notion of a sentient medic was, already, a flawed premise. The repair drones functioned perfectly adequately: tireless, singleminded in focus, and unflappable. From what he'd seen of the Autobot medics, almost none of those were true. But still, however obedient, the little repairbots simply by definition, did not have a flair for innovation.

And innovation was what he needed at the moment. So.

"Flatline," he said, coolly. He stepped across the threshold of the laboratory. The air was cooler in here than the rest of the ship, and the hum and periodic 'whooshes' of equipment seemed to swallow his words. In here—in there, to be precise, in the large silver pod that dominated the center of the room, the Fallen sprawled in a suitably indecent (Megatron hoped) half-death. Waiting for his resurrection. Which he would owe to Megatron, as last time. But this time, there would be no mistakes. This time, there would be no denying Megatron of his rightful due. This time: if this ill-advised experiment in sentient medics paid off. Primus knew Starscream's attempt at recreating the Allspark had not. But then again, Starscream hadn't had the foresight Megatron had.

Flatline sat behind a row of monitors, looking, to Megatron's optics, entirely like a poor concept wrapped in grey armor and flashed with red. He had come from Thundercracker's command, and, well, unlike Skywarp, the blue Seeker's loyalty was a little…uneven. Megatron had developed a mistrust of anything with Thundercracker's imprimatur. Which was why, when pressed, he'd chosen Skywarp.

"My lord," the medic said, just as coolly, looking up from his monitor. As though he was the one whose time mattered. Megatron frowned.

"I presume your…discourtesy is due to your immersion in the task to which I have set you," Megatron said.

"Discourtesy?" Flatline looked at him as though he had just made up the word. Perhaps Thundercracker had tolerated this sort of insubordination, but Megatron would not.

"I have contacted you several times for an update on your progress. Now," Megatron said, resting a possessive hand over the monitor Flatline had been peering into, letting his long talons dangle in front of the screen, "Either you are rude, or you have been avoiding the fact that you have no progress to report." He allowed a smile to curl the sides of his mouth.

"Progress." Flatline said, rolling the word around in his vocalizer as if it represented an entirely alien concept. "Yes." He rolled his chair against the floor to another monitor, this one showing an active readout of changing lines that swept up and down in an unsteady sine wave. "Theoretically, your hypothesis is possible. There has been some diminishment of capacity in the subject's intellect, but the project specifications you sent me did not list that as a vital feature for preservation, so I have not exerted myself unduly to remedy that."

He looked up, and something in his red optics told Megatron he knew exactly why the Decepticon overlord didn't particularly care if the Fallen were brought back stupider than a slag pile. But maybe that he wasn't quite smart enough to keep that supposition to himself.

"What can we access from his core programming?"

"At the present time, nothing. There is some kind of programming that I have not yet encountered before—some sort of constantly cycling encryption—that I haven't yet figure out how to break." He looked back at the monitor. "Yet."

"If he were entirely offline, the encryption would fail," Megatron mused.

"Possible, but risky. The encryption cycler does not seem to be tied to any of his other power core or circuitry. Almost…independently powered. If we took him offline, it is possible the core programming could be wiped."

Megatron frowned. Holding out on me to the last, are you? he cursed at the silver pod. "This is not progress. This is a list of obstacles."

"Discovering one's obstacles is a kind of progress in diagnostics." Flatline met his eyes again. You'd better be useful to me, Megatron thought. And as soon as you are, I will break you.

"And do we have any progress on how we might sidestep that encryption?"

"Revivification. I've done it before." He shifted uncomfortably for the first time. "I have used a sentient spark to animate other mechs. But…that precise technique will not suffice, here." He waved his hand, cutting off discussion.

Megatron tilted his head, patiently waiting. He knew Flatline wanted him to ask. He would outwait him. A little lesson in power dynamics for him.

"What I hypothesize," Flatline said, stroking one hand against the other, as if rubbing an old injury, "is a variation on that technique. The use of non-sentient sparks."

"Sparks." He meant the drones. Barely alive, moving haltingly toward sentience. Carefully nurtured under Decepticon protocols, preserved even during Starscream's tenure.

"It…will require many."

Megatron paused. What was the price on his ambition? Was there one? Why choke on the price tag now when so much has already been paid? "Do it."


	32. Not on Your Knees

A/N Every long story I write has that one chapter that's like the emotional gutpunch, right? Yeah, this is the one for this story. I actually still can't read it without crying. (Which I realize makes me laaaaaaame). I hate 'tissue warnings' but, yeah. You're either going to be sad or furious at me. (There's a reason I didn't warn for this, though...)

32. _Not On Your Knees_

**USS Dreadnought**

They brought him up, stasis cuffs rheo'd so high he could barely lift his feet to clear the floor, the metal scraping along the deck of the hangar, then the elevator, casting sprays of sparks when his feet hit metal reinforcements.

He wished, vainly, just to waste the processing space in articulating something other than a rising panic, that the cuffs slowed down his mind as well. This was…horror enough to be a walking zombie—aware of everything around him but only able to respond with glacial speed. The soldiers pointing weapons at him didn't seem to believe his torpor was real. They moved so fast they seemed almost to blur in his slowed optics. He followed them, slowly, creakily, to the elevator, and stood, numbly, dumbly, for the jerky ride up. He thought briefly about trying to plow (at his speed 'make a break for' was just laughable) his way over to the side railing and over, but an eternity under water in high stasis, fading to a slow energon starvation death, did not seem like much of an improvement. If there were any hope he'd be found, reenergized, he'd have done it. Or at least tried. As it was…just get it over with.

Get it over with. And die on your feet, he told himself. Not on your knees. Just a little while longer. And it will all—the whole disastrous experiment of your life—all be finally, finally over. Die, while you still have the strength to do it right.

His killers (he tried to think of them in any other way, but no words would come and he was getting tired of trying to soften reality) were easy to recongnize, by their blatantly non-military slouches and the pile of strange boxes they had arrayed in front of them. They directed him to stand where they'd painted a red circle, which was probably meaningful, but he had no idea. And no ability to speak—the stasis cuffs slurred his speech to a crawl. He could whine, however. He simply refused to indulge them. And his own weakness. He cut his vocalize. He would not give them the satisfaction. Would not give himself the temptation.

He shuffled to the red dot. Just…no point in fighting. No point in delay. Resist? For what?

He nodded slowly at Sternburgh, who stood, grim faced and stiff, along the flightline. Sternburgh had left him an hour before dawn, to shave and put on a new uniform—green, like a suit, the entire left half of the chest and half of each sleeve covered with ribbons and medals and decorations. Max was there, too, still blinking red-eyed in the early light, looking already queasy. Oh look, Barricade thought dizzily, someone will notice that I'm dead. He hated that the thought hurt. He hated that it mattered. Hated the brutal, bitter irony that the only creatures in the universe who would feel anything at his death were his captors, both blatantly using him for their own ends.

No sense backing away now. See it. See your last moments online. He lifted his head. The early light slanted pink and grey and somehow orange, stretching thin fingers across the sky, lighting the water into sparkles. It was, he thought, strangely, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen—the sky and the water blending together, one still and quiet and broad, the other active and surging and vibrant with reflected light and color. He wondered if every dying creature saw the last thing it would ever see and judged it beautiful.

He heard the hum of what must be the weapon that would kill him warming up, slowly drowning out the faraway sounds of sea birds, the deeper, now almost comfortingly-familiar thrum of the ship's engines. Taking even the small comforts of those sounds away from him.

Barricade was vaguely glad the stasis cuffs prevented him from trembling.

Some other non-soldier emerged from a small protected set up next to the bulk of the conning tower. "Data capture's ready," the non-soldier said. The words seemed to float through the air, slipping like thin ghosts through his audio. The others nodded. The weapon's humming stabilized. And.

No warning. He was almost grateful for that. Why would he get warning? He was not a person. Merely a machine. A thing. A test subject. Thrice removed from consideration. It started as a stabbing buzz behind his mandibles, right where his central power core connected to his cortex. He twitched his head, which responded sluggishly, not like tossing his head would do a damn thing.

The pain spread, and grew, blossoming in intensity across his sensornet. He tried to keep his gaze on the killers, look them in the eye. He tried to stay on his feet.

His stabilizers gave.

He collapsed to the deck, hard on one hip, armor snapping off at the impact, spraying energon across the deck.

Max ran between Barricade and the weapon. "That's it! You've had your test. It works. Stop it. Done now!" He flapped his arms wildly, as if he could disperse the weapon's waves. Ridiculous, Barricade thought, numbly, his optics sidewards on the deck. An MP strode forward, jerking Max aside. Barricade gathered himself (inwardly first, it seemed, bracing himself against the onslaught of pain redlining his HUD with its alarms), and pushed slowly to his feet. Not on your knees, he told himself. It was all he could do to get that one thought through the mass of error messages and failure-imminent warnings. Not on your knees.

"Stop it!" Max shrieked, thrashing against the MP. Sternburgh stood rigid, his face white. Barricade saw Yee touch his arm. Could hear them, even through his pain. "You don't have to watch, Roe. It's not going to change anything."

"You know how I don't turn away from my failures, Heather. And…someone owes him this."

"He's getting up," someone said.

The waves grew higher, more intense. The energon leaking from his side was hot against his thigh armor, overheated. His cooling system buzzed on, overworked already, unable to handle the load of heat generated simply by processing all of the alarms.

He felt…like a burning under his armor plating, like a heat burn and an acid burn combined. He looked at his armor, almost expecting to see the finish blister, peel away.

Another ratchet up of intensity. His legs failed again. He caught himself (barely) on his knees and elbows. Not. On. Your. Knees. He pushed up slowly, overbalancing sideways, unable to stop himself with his arms this time, collapsing again. He writhed to get his legs under him, pushing up.

He heard a strange sound: Max, throwing up. A sarcastic comment started somewhere in Barricade's cortex, but never completed the journey to his active processing—swamped with yet more error and system failure messages. He dragged one foot upright, leaning forward to leverage up on it, leaning against his shin plate.

He felt a sick icy horror as the armor plate sheared away. And a despairing agony when he saw the connective cilia, supposed to be pink and silky and alive, were frayed and grey and dead.

They were not killing him easily. He wished he had deserved to die easily.

He pushed up anyway, more armor clattering off him, the air scorching the connective cilia, filling his olfactory sensors with a repulsive singed smell. He couldn't believe there was this much pain in the universe. Every system was at redline. His optics began fading out on him, his audio cut out to intermittent static. He knew, that the next time he fell, he wouldn't have the strength to stand up again. His gyroscopic equilibrium system crashed, and his last conscious thought was that it was a blessing: he wouldn't know when he finally fell over. And died on his knees.


	33. Rescue

33. _Rescue_

**USS Dreadnought. **

Barricade collapsed in a final shower of sparks, blown circuits scorching the air, his failing vocalizer emitting a haunting mechanical keening, just as the first explosion rocked the ship.

"Get down here NOW!" Blackout howled over comm. Starscream didn't waste any time asking questions. Anything he needed to know, mission essential, was in that agonized voice. He kicked on his afterburners, dropping out of the high scanning flightpath he and Skywarp had taken. Skywarp acknowledged briskly. The two jets shot down through the clouds, zeroing in on the copter's coordinates. They heard a series of explosions and the insistent kick of Blackout's gun. Black smoke floated skyward as the copter's rounds hit home and sent something into a mushrooming fireball.

Starscream felt the shift as they came in range of the jamming field Vortex was generating. The larger copter was racing at his top speed toward the carrier as well, Starscream dove in a strafing run, blowing the jets parked along the ship's flight deck, lifting up to spin into another run when he saw….

Oh.

No.

Starscream landed heavily on the deck, straddling the wreck that had once been Barricade. He tried not to see the brittle armor plates, the bare sensor panels, connective cilia scorched and brown; tried not to see the frame still twitching—still twitching. He raised his eyes to a team of humans who were using some sort of fire suppressant on a smoldering metal wreck. Almost without thinking, he fired a missile at them, gritting his jaw in satisfaction as it exploded, tearing a fiery hole in the flight deck. Skywarp swept in over him landing at his back, weapons arrayed outward. The humans were beginning to pull themselves from the shock of the sudden assault. Gunfire began sputtering across the deck—small arms fire, completely ineffective. Some were falling back to regroup—a few were rushing toward the hole in the deck, determined to try and help the few pitiful humans who still had strength enough to scream.

Barricade did not have even that much, Starscream thought.

"Orders," Skywarp asked. "Engage or suppressive?"

Starscream looked down at Barricade's ruined frame. "Kill them. All of them."

[*****]

Max ran over as the bronze colored jet crouched down on top of Barricade's limp body. Sparks still shot out intermittently from damaged relays, joints twitched pathetically. "Starscream!" he yelled, waving his arms. The jet's head jerked up at the sound of his earth-form name, hissing, flexing his talons.

"It's me! Max! You remember, from Diego Garcia? Jennifer?"

"Get away, Max human," Starscream said, coldly. His chain guns were still spinning from the rounds he had launched upon landing.

He pointed to Barricade. "I can help! Please, let me do something."

"I remember the last time that you helped," the jet said. "I do not think Barricade deserves your kind of help."

Max flinched as something exploded behind him. "Please!" Max said, and Starscream saw that his eyes were red and wet, as Jennifer's had been when she was upset. "I hate this. I can save him!"

"If I allow you near him, you had better," Starscream said. Another explosion drowned out Max's reply, but the black haired human pointed off to one side of the flight deck, where Starscream saw an almost-familiar looking cart. He nodded and Max tore off to get his cart.

"What's the hesitation," Max said, as he returned, his cart almost tipping over as he squealed to a stop. "I fixed you all right."

"Do not consider that one of your triumphs, Max human. Be warned that any attempt to offline him will result in your immediate termination." A talon flexed in front of his face, barbs glittering.

"I'm on your side!" Well, in this. I didn't want this to happen. "I'm trying to help!"

"Why did you not stop it from happening?"

"I couldn't. I tried. A bunch of us did."

"You did not try hard enough." Starscream looked up, dismissively, and fired a salvo from one chain gun. Max dropped to the deck, forearms pressed against his ears.

Max snapped. "Do you want me to help or not! I tried. And godDAMMIT, sometimes you try your hardest and it's still not good enough."

The jet's optics spiraled, considering. He moved his hand away. "Do your best, human. He is not to offline." It was supposed to sound like a threat, but even Max could hear the plea.

Dead End jumped out of Vortex's belly so the larger copter could transform, the jamming nodes still stuck to his dermal plating like leeches. Vortex strode almost casually toward the few semi-operational looking aircraft on the end of the flight deck, blowing them with expert strikes to the fuel lines.

"Orders?" Dead End asked. Starscream pointed to where humans were beginning to pile out of the main structure squatting along one side of the flight deck. Dead End veered toward them.

"And Dead End," Starscream said, "Be as brutal as you wish, this time."

[*****]

Max's fingers were swelling from the heat, even through his rubber gloves, but still he kept on working. Whatever that weapon had done, it had made the entire metal frame scorchingly hot—some of the thinner struts were warped and bent.

He had absolutely no reason to believe that the robot was still functional, but he was determined to try. Primarily because of the large angry jet currently breathing, literally, down his neck. He hated that he couldn't stop the damn test in the first place. Barbaric.

Max knew he was a wuss, really. He wasn't really one of these big scary knuckle-dragging types. Maybe he was just a pansy about death, but maybe it was just bad damn science. And maybe if we're supposed to be the good guys, he thought, we shouldn't do things like that. Barricade's calm acquiescence had scared him: his pathetic struggle to get up over and over again—he couldn't understand. And he knew that. Not a soldier, and no desire to become one. But he could respect the enemy robot's behavior, right now, a hell of a lot more than he respected his own side.

He'd never minded being a skinny little geek before, until the MP had dragged him away as if he weighed about six pounds. How they could stand by and just watch it happen…! Sternburgh at least had the decency to look furious, and he'd glared so hard that Max thought at one point his eyes would burst out of his head. Max looked up—couldn't find him now. Max hoped Sternburgh managed to get away.

"How are repairs progressing?" The jet loomed over him. Yeah, like, no pressure or anything. Especially the way he flexed those talons.

"Progressing," he said. "Need some…something. I don't know. Something's not working right." His multimeter was recording a drop in current. He had a flashback to about a million bad tv shows when the doctor looks up and howls 'we're losing him!' and then someone else pounds the chest and screams 'live, damn you, LIVE!'.

"What is not working right?" The jet crouched even lower, his legs bent nearly flat. He paused for a second, looked up, and then unleashed a missile. The missile's launch deafened Max for a moment. He clapped his hands to his ears, tapping dumbly at a battered bit of metal he'd excavated through the dented wreckage of the chassis.

"Some kind of current," he yelled, though he barely heard the sound register in his own ears. "Some power source or something. Too weak to do anything."

"You can run a power connection, yes?" The jet's voice somehow made it, thinly, through his bruised eardrums. He nodded. The jet bent lower. "Will I do further damage by moving him?" Max shook his head. The central core was the only thing even remotely salvageable at this point. He watched as the jet scooped the limbs into his arms, almost like a mother with a child. Well, the size difference was almost about right. One of Barricade's legs dangled—too limply—from the jet's grasp.

Max heard armor slide. "You may run the connection here." Max trotted to his cart, dragging out a battered set of jumper cables. Ridiculous, of course, but he didn't have time for anything more subtle. So the $5.95 Wal-mart special would have to do. And he'd pronounce himself a God of Engineering if it worked.

He grounded one of the alli clips against one of the jet's struts, and quickly hooked the rest up, glad for his rubber gloves. He pulled a multimeter out of his pocket, laying the leads against metal. "Current's running," he said. Evenly, too. "May drain you," he warned.

"I should not be concerned about that." The jet pushed to his feet. "You shall be spared."

"Not—not just me," Max said. "Others fought too."

Starscream looked down at Max, straightening up. He was…way taller than Max remembered. "Gather those you wish, and head to the Blackout. He will take you to safety." The jet spun on his heel, running a handful of paces before leaping into the air, firing his jets.


	34. Return to Neutral

A/N Right. We finish this story today. This chapter and *facepalm* an epilogue. It CONTINUES next week in a new arc. Yay. I'm sure you're thrilled.

34. _Return to Neutral_

**Diego Garcia**

"They've seen me before," Vortex argued, "in a similar circumstance. They'll hesitate, at least, before firing on me."

"Seen me, too," Blackout said, half-heartedly. Last thing he really wanted to do was touch, much less help, any of these humans. They'd killed Barricade. But he'd had his orders, and he'd follow them. And the way Starscream rocketed up off the deck—maybe there was hope. If Barricade were permanently offline, if there was no chance, why would the jet rush so fast he broke the soundbarrier within 2 kliks after liftoff? Maybe? He'd at least be able to get his armor piece. And a little payback.

"Not under the same circumstances." Vortex wasn't fond of the idea of helping humans himself, but Starscream's orders had been to transport whomever this Max human brought by. A good soldier followed orders. And trusted that his leader had his reasons.

"Yeah, but…my orders. Not yours."

"Team mission," Vortex stated. "Doesn't matter who does it as long as it gets done. Plus," he added, his voice strained, "I owe you: I didn't help at Tunguska."

"No big deal." But Vortex could hear the relief creeping into Blackout's voice. The copter didn't want to fly to Diego Garcia, laden with humans. Especially not when Barricade—or what was left of him—was winging to the Nemesis.

"Go," Vortex said. "We finish this up, and lift, and you go back to the Nemesis." Vortex hadn't used this tone of commanding assurance in a long time, and he was himself a little surprised that it worked. Blackout grunted over the comment and spun his rotors up, lifting off the deck as Vortex settled down, rolling his doors open. The injured humans, led by the puny black-haired one Starscream had said to rescue, piled on swiftly. Dead End kept a wary pulse rifle over them, making sure they didn't get any unpleasant ideas, but Vortex was fairly certain that even humans were not so evil as to blow up a load of themselves, injured, to take out one rather insignificant copter. Vortex knew what it felt like to agonize over a lost comrade. He could handle this. He wasn't as close to it.

He didn't care about the humans, but orders were orders and Starscream's orders had always been…idiosyncratic. Kill the humans, rescue the humans…it was entirely Starscream's usual method. Still the humans who needed to die were dead—or dying—and though Vortex didn't believe anyone here was neutral, much less sympathetic with him, he had a vague grasp of the warrior's punctiliousness that moved Starscream to at least offer to save the one called Max.

[*****]

"Hold on, there you go," Yee helped lift Sternburgh onto the deck plating. He'd lost his artificial leg, his trouser leg flapping pathetically in the breeze kicked up by the huge helicopter's dual rotors. Smoke scorched his uniform's brass, and one sleeve's hem was blackened. Max had grabbed Yee first, spotting the white-blonde hair, and insisted they get on the copter.

"Ridiculous," Sternburgh griped. "People more injured than me needing rescue here." What he was probably really thinking, Yee thought, was that he was in part responsible. And should go down with the ship. Dammit, that's the Navy's job. Not his.

"Shut up, Roe," Yee said, climbing in beside him. "Anyone deserves to get out of this alive, it's you." she said. She pulled out the yellow elastic that held her braid, bending forward to shake out her hair. Without her hair pulled back in its tight sleek braid, she looked…young. Too young to be doing this.

"Sounds to me like you've gone soft, and over a robot," Sternburgh tried to joke. He winced as someone bumped the stump of his leg loading on.

"Him? I've…met worse." A strange admission, and probably as far as he was going to get. "Ask me, we kind of deserved it." A few of the injured sailors protested. "Not you guys. But think. What did we just do? Torture a prisoner. Sure, it's for science right? But that's fuckin' Mengele stuff. Like those hypothermia experiments he did on those concentration camp people. All they did is what we'd've done, trying to rescue him, and being royally pissed when it's too fucking late."

The sailors fell quiet. One ventured, "It's a machine. Like crushing a car."

Yee rounded on him. "I spent way more time talking to that machine than you did, for one, and for two, he felt pain. Tell me he didn't." Her blue eyes blazed. "Causing pain deliberately is torture. Even if it's for research. It's torture. And doing it to the point of permanent damage? The America I used to believe in didn't do that."

"Oh Yee," Sternburgh started to argue.

"Don't you 'oh Yee' me, Roe." She ran her hands through her hair. "You and I have done some stuff that…will cause us problems with Saint Peter, that's for sure. And physical coercion is one of them. But we had RULES, Roe. We had limits. This was sadism and xenophobia all rolled up and packaged as legitimate science."

"Don't look at me," Max said, squatting down. "I'm the traitor who helped the enemy. Because I love machines. Geek loser picks a machine over his own kind." His hands toyed idly with his multimeter. "Isn't that like punishable by firing squad or something?"

Sternburgh pushed himself upright. "Son, you didn't do that, we'd all be dead. Everyone on this bird owes you their life." The floor and walls of the helicopter began vibrating as the Chinook spun up to grab air. The doors wheeled closed by themselves, but not before they heard a tremendous roaring explosion. A few of the sailors teared up, weeping for their lost comrades, their lost ship. Hating themselves, Sternburgh knew all too well, for their own survival. "No one will forget that." He glared around the cabin, packed to overflowing with injured. Max hadn't been too picky about who he saved—they were packed double stacked, or triple against the deck.

Perhaps because of Yee's Mengele example, Sternburgh's mind fed him a picture of Holocaust prisoners crammed into a cattle car. Except, instead of being rattled along the ground to certain, agonizing death, they would sail smoothly through the air to life and safety.

At the hands of their enemy.

[*****]

Flareup was doing yet another trapped-feeling circuit of the island. What could she do now? It seemed that every time she tried to make things right, another door got slammed in her face.

Worse, she could see now that she was hurting others. Before she'd been so hung up on getting herself heard. Making herself understood. It was petty. It was tearing her sisters apart. It made her…incapable even of carrying on simple conversation without it turning into an argument—with Optimus, with Cliffjumper. In a sense, they were right: she was turning into a problem.

What had she been so pushy about? Why so insistent? It had been so obvious from the beginning they weren't interested, they weren't capable of listening. They'd rather make excuses for her, turn her conscience into a pathology, something to be diagnosed. Maybe there is something wrong with me, she thought, her tires schussing through sand that had blown over the road. The midday sunlight cut the dunes into sharp ripples, as if the ocean itself had somehow frozen.

Is there something wrong with me? Is there? I have doubts. Doubts I've never had before, thoughts I've never had before. But isn't that a sign of growing? Isn't that the price of sentience? Or are we only allowed a certain circumscribed set of thoughts if we wear this badge? Has war atrophied our minds as well as our sensibilities?

The thing that ate at her, she thought, picking up her speed again around a long, lazy curve, was that of all mechs, Starscream had understood. And tried to protect her. He'd seen. And…tried to protect her, tried to give her a lie she could hide behind. He didn't know she didn't want the lie. His offer had been good faith—I'll take the blame, and you can go on living your sweet pure life. You can go on wrapped in your illusion—the truth that you hid even from yourself can stay hidden. It was the most decent thing anyone had done for her in a long time: a pitiful rag to cover her nakedness. And from her enemy. The one who had held her while Dead End tore at her body.

Only, that truth couldn't stay hidden. Not anymore. She'd seen something inside herself. She'd seen a choice she had to make—to choose a badge or to choose decency, or…mercy, or whatever it was she'd THOUGHT elevated the Autobots over their enemies. All while her own side grew more and more callous and brutal. They had lost sight of who they were, what they believed in. Why they fought. Did she know the answer herself? No, of course not. But she knew enough to know it was at least a question worth asking. The ONLY question worth asking. Why are we doing this? What justifies violence?

What did you sell of yourself to commit violence, what price did you pay?

Not a victim, not a victim, her engines seemed to thrum to the warm air, the soft breeze coming in off the ocean. Humans are wrong. They betrayed us. TWICE. And now, who knows what they'll do? We've done nothing to protect Barricade from them. Nothing. I'd heard them talk—that they would monitor. Another good intention that went nowhere. Or, another double standard. It made her sick to contemplate that choice.

She was looping along the runway, almost itchy with frustration, when she heard a sound she remembered all too well from her memory purges: the heavy double 'whup-whup' of a dual-rotored helicopter, almost like an omen. Like her past come back to confront her—as if she needed another reminder that the act of the old Flareup was well and truly over.

The others heard it too and a group raced to the flightline, weapons ready.

"Vortex," she heard Cliffjumper spit. Flareup heard weapons arm. She rolled up, on the fringes of the group, numb, torn. She wanted to turn away: she didn't trust herself, for one thing. For another, she couldn't bear another act of violence from either side. She prayed that Vortex would indefinitely hold his fire, prevent forever the moment when the Autobots would feel justified in opening their arsenal against him—how many against one? They would show no mercy. Mercy, fair odds, these were no longer Autobot values.

Just as Vortex hit the far edge of range, his doors whipped open. Little whitish pink dots, Flareup thought, at first, before they resolved into human faces. Crowded into the belly of the copter, almost too tight to move. Flareup recoiled at the thought of humans, but the recognition of the fear and pain on their faces cut across everything. Flareup, she told herself, if you stand for principles, that means them too. You want to be the one seeing the good in the Decepticons? See the good in humans as well. She felt something, almost like a rushing from her capacitor, that broke through a crust of hate she had begun to build against the humans. No, Flareup, it was not right to be so naïve about them. They are capable of deceit. But don't fall into Cliffjumper's trap and think you can 'punish' that out of them.

Nor, she thought, looking at Optimus, think you can condescend to them, overlook their trespasses and betrayals. Forgive yes, but the first step of forgiveness is acknowledgement of wrongdoing. And as she knew from her own experience, Optimus was slow to acknowledge any darkness. In her, in the humans…and in himself.

That was for another time. Right now, she rushed forward to where the large copter was coming in to land. She prayed he recognized her, and didn't open fire.

He didn't, though she heard his weapons click to ready, his cannon humming, primed to fire if need be. He wasn't taking any chances.

She worked quickly—the only one who dared, it seemed, approach the Decepticon-to help offload the humans, beckoning the ambulances forward, carrying the injured ones herself, wheeling deftly on her tire through the mass of walking wounded. They moved numbly, like zombies, too overdone with what they had seen to react to anything. Compliant.

"They're from the ship Barricade was on," she said, quietly, to Vortex, as she bent inside to lift another human, on an improvised stretcher.

"They tried to kill him: quite possibly succeeded," Vortex said, flatly. "They have a weapon. They use it on us, they can use it on you."

"Why did you save these?"

"One of them helped prep Barricade for transport. So Starscream gave the order he could save the others." A world of flat neutrality in the tone. 'Obeying orders', even for mercy's sake.

"He's alive?" She felt something like thin, burning kind of hope. Her betrayal would be for…something…if he lived. What was the value of a life? Certainly a little moral discomfort. It bothered her still that she was the only one who had come near, weapons lowered. How can autobots say they believe in peace when their first reaction is to grab a weapon?

"Don't know. Didn't look like it."

She tried not to let the thin flame die out. And she felt a strange, strong pride, almost a responsibility. She had shown some kindness to Starscream, and look—because of that, he had shown kindness to these humans. He had saved them, tasked one of his own mechs to risk his life transporting them to safety. That was what, she thought, would bring and end to war. That was the antidote to violence. Her hand tightened on a support beam, as the last of the humans offloaded. "Take me with you," she blurted. "Please. I can't—I'm not one of them anymore."

Long silence. "You can't. You'd never survive," Vortex said. "Not in any way you like."

"I-I can learn." She already felt her spark failing—fear, wishing she could retract her foolish request.

"Not broken enough to be one of us," Vortex said, firing his rotors, "Stay that way."

The rotorwash pushed her away from him, just as one of the flash-storms so common in the area cast a darkness across the runway. She bit her lip. Another failure. ANOTHER one. Another moment of raw honesty, but this one not rebuffed. Instead, Vortex saw her, recognized her, in a way her own side could not.

And another secret the Decepticons would keep.


	35. Epilogue

EPILOGUE:

Blackout wheeled back for safe distance. The jet hovered, blasting his entire payload of missiles at the aircraft carrier, the tower bursting into fragments. Blackout unleashed his own missiles, his main gun still chattering across the now empty flight deck. Not fixated on killing humans anymore. Just destroying the ship: a bright silver target for their rage.

Another explosion, bursting from belowdecks, followed by another and another, in a systematic chain.

"Dead End seems to have found his calling," Skywarp said, blandly. A side of the hull punched itself out, and, among a roil of smoke an d flame, Dead End's red frame showed. Blackout acknowledged across commnet and swooped in for a retrieve.

They hung for a moment as the ship gave a groan, the kind of sound that metal protesting its inevitable failure made. Blackout grunted in satisfaction.

"I wonder if this changes anything," Skywarp mused, as the ship splintered in half, flames blossoming from the gaps in the metal. Another series of explosions as the torpedo storage units went up.

"How so?"

"Mission logs indicate humans as an obstacle, but not an enemy. The Autobots have always been our opponents, and beyond avoiding detection, it doesn't seem like we've had any real animus towards them." A pause. "Before now."

"Now," Dead End said, "When they have a weapon that can do that to one of us."

The commnet went deadly quiet.

Blackout spoke quietly, trying to mask how desperately he wanted to be at the Nemesis. "I guess all along they've seen us as the enemy, but we were too fixed on the Autobots to notice. We were…asleep." The conning tower blew in a massive burst, a fireball rolling black smoke upward on a carpet of red and sparks "But now that we're awake…."

END

X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X

Well, there you go. One more story in this arc, Rift, which I hope actually manages to tie everything up. As usual, it's all finished except for editing so it's just a matter of posting—I get sad when I find a great fic that the author abandoned—that will not happen with this story arc that we've both spent over a year on! Watch me as I try to be semi-ROTF compliant, juggle a cast of thousands, and be all Epic and stuff!

I want to thank everyone who's read this story (and survived this far). I know I get a bit too political at times (someone told me all the political/philosophical stuff is 'boring' and they stopped reading), and I struggle with those Autobots, still, but thanks for sticking with me! 'Con-centric fics, genfic, dark stuff, non-shipping fics are a hard sell sometimes and I really have been kept going at times looking at those readership stats. Even if you never reviewed, the fact that week after week I see over a hundred hits on this story—I can't even tell you how much that means.

Right. I'm getting sappy. If you have any questions, etc, feel free to shoot me a PM or something. I suck at responding to reviews because I'm terribly shy, actually. But I'm trying to get better at that!


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